PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AFP) — Doctors without Borders (MSF) said Monday it had closed a hospital in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince after it was hit by gunfire at the weekend — a gloomy sign of an escalation of violence in the city.

Luckily, no one was wounded in the attack on the clinic in Port-au-Prince’s Martissant neighbourhood, which has been run by the Nobel Peace Prize-winning charity since 2006 and provides critical care to the poor.

The area is now effectively under siege by armed gangs, and Doctors Without Borders (or Medecins sans Frontieres or MSF) said it could no longer “keep caring for the population without putting its staff in danger”.

The facility has been evacuated and patients transported to other clinics, the group said in a statement.

“The safety of our personnel is a priority because we cannot care for others if our own staff is at risk,” said Alessandra Giudiceandrea, the head of MSF’s mission in Haiti.

She added she did not believe the group was directly targeted in the attack.

The impoverished Caribbean nation, which is deep in political and security chaos, has seen a marked uptick in the number of kidnappings for ransom by armed gangs, and is also facing an increase in the number of COVID-19 cases.

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