Port-au-Prince - Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) condemns in the strongest terms the killing of at least two patients who were executed after an MSF ambulance was stopped by members of a vigilante group and law enforcement officers in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

On 11 November, an MSF ambulance transporting three young people with gunshot wounds was stopped by Haitian police about 100 metres from the MSF hospital in the Drouillard area of Port-au-Prince, and was forced to proceed with a transfer to a public hospital.

After an attempt to arrest the patients and firing shots in the air, the police escorted the ambulance to Hôpital La Paix. Once there, law enforcement officers and members of a self-defence group surrounded the ambulance, slashed the tires, and tear-gassed MSF staff inside the vehicle to force them out. They then took the wounded patients a short distance away, outside the hospital grounds, where at least two of them were executed.

The MSF staff in the ambulance were violently attacked, insulted, tear-gassed, threatened with death, and held against their will for more than four hours before being allowed to leave. The MSF ambulance was damaged and left unable to drive, so the team departed in a second vehicle.

“This act is a shocking display of violence, both for the patients and for MSF medical personnel, and it seriously calls into question MSF’s ability to continue delivering essential care to the Haitian people, which is in dire need,” says Christophe Garnier, MSF head of mission. “Our teams and our patients need a minimum level of safety to continue providing medical care.”

MSF is a humanitarian organisation working in Haiti to address medical needs in basic healthcare, trauma care, and support victims and survivors of sexual violence. We call on the authorities and all stakeholders to uphold the right to access medical care without discrimination or hindrance, and to ensure the protection of patients, as well as respect for medical personnel and healthcare facilities in the face of increasing violence.