Hundreds of refugees fled their homes in Haiti’s capital of Port-au-Prince on Monday amid a fresh wave of gang violence.
The situation became so dangerous that hospitals shut down, Doctors Without Borders suspended humanitarian operations, and Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aime suspended plans for the first presidential election in a decade.
Haiti has been overrun by violent gangs ever since the assassination of President Jovenal Moise in July 2021. The government controls only a small portion of Port-au-Prince, and gangsters have rampaged across the countryside to loot, murder, and rape rural citizens.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) found in October 2025 that over 1.4 million people have been displaced by the reign of gangland terror since Moise’s assassination. About two-thirds of the displacements in late 2025 were people driven from their homes in rural areas, rather than the capital city.
The Miami Herald reported on Monday that the latest surge of gang violence was sparked by a turf war between armed groups fighting for control of the Cite Soleil and Croix des Bouquets neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince. The fighting began in earnest on Sunday morning, and terrified civilians fled the area under cover of darkness on Sunday night.
Doctors Without Borders (known by its French acronym MSF) said its staffers were forced to evacuate from their Cite Soleil hospital after being overwhelmed by gunshot victims and people seeking refuge.
A sand truck carrying people drives through the streets of Port-au-Prince following armed attacks in the Plaine du Cul-de-Sac area of Port-au-Prince, Haiti on May 11, 2026. Armed clashes that began on the evening of Sunday, May 10, have triggered a new wave of panic, forcing residents to escape the violence between rival gangs. (Guerinault Louis/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“In just 12 hours, our teams treated more than 40 people with gunshot wounds. One of our security guards was also struck by a stray bullet right inside our hospital compound,” said MSF’s head of mission for Haiti, Davina Hayles.
“Several hundred inhabitants of Cite Soleil, as well as our colleagues and their families, have sought refuge in our hospital, having no other option to shelter from the gunfire,” she added.
Other hospitals in the area said they would suspend operations and evacuate patients due to the fighting. According to MSF, not a single hospital in Cite Soleil was functioning as of Monday.
The other neighborhood that saw heavy fighting, Croix-des-Bouquets, is located in an area known as the Cul-de-Sac Plain. Residents said the savage gang war was presaged by fires that were deliberately set to destroy the cane fields owned by the venerable Rhum Barbancourt distillery.
The distillery and several other local businesses sent an urgent letter to the prime minister requesting police protection and calling for repairs to local roads, but there was no response, even after they warned that instability might completely shut down Toussaint Louverture International Airport.
“You cannot secure an airport if you allow the roads around it to degrade,” the letter pointed out.
Rhum Barbancourt CEO Delphine Gardere on Monday posted a video of families fleeing the gang war, calling the scenes “unbearable.”
“Civilians are struck down by stray bullets. Businesses are hit by gunfire. An entire area lives under terror – and this despite multiple notes, alerts, and repeated requests concerning the Cul-de-Sac Plain,” she lamented.
“During the night, one of our employees was killed by gunfire!” she exclaimed. “How long will we have to count the dead before concrete actions are taken?”
Observers told the Miami Herald that gang violence intensified after smaller gangs began banding together to challenge the bigger outfits for valuable territory. The delay of promised reinforcements for the U.N.’s Gang Suppression Force seems to have created an opportunity for gangs to grab what they could.
Another motivation for the surge of bloodshed might have been prolonging the state of anarchy by frightening the government out of holding elections. That gambit appeared successful on Monday, as Prime Minister Fils-Aime said elections would be postponed by at least half a year.
“It is clear that the security conditions are not met at the level for us to have elections in August,” he said.
“I would like for elections to happen by the end of the year. On February 7, we would have an elected president,” he said.
Haiti’s last presidential election was held in 2016. The winner, Jovenel Moise, postponed legislative elections in 2019, postponed the presidential election that was supposed to occur in February 2021, and was ruling by decree at the time of his death.
As for the U.N. security mission, the last of the small contingent of Kenyan police deployed to Haiti departed on April 27, and it was not clear where their replacements might come from, or when they could arrive.
Kenya originally pledged to send a thousand police officers to Haiti, but wound up sending less than 800. Only $400 million of the $600 million budgeted for the mission materialized, most of it supplied by the United States. The U.N. fielded complaints of sexual exploitation and other abuse by the Kenyan police, but their commanders denied all wrongdoing. The gangs remained firmly in control of much of Haiti during the deployment.
The U.N. mission to Haiti supposedly entered a new phase with the departure of the Kenyans, with some 5,500 officers expected to be on the ground by October of this year – but so far, only 400 personnel from Chad have arrived. Chad has committed to send another 1,100 officers, but there is no indication when they will arrive, and no word on where the other 4,000 will come from.