The Federal Aviation Administration announced Tuesday that it will prohibit US airlines from flying to Haiti for 30 days after gangs shot a Spirit Airlines plane. Bullets hit the Spirit plane when it was about to land Monday in the country's capital, Port-au-Prince, injuring a flight attendant and forcing the airport to shut down. The shooting was part of a wave of violence that erupted as the country plagued by gang violence swore in its new prime minister after a politically tumultuous process. A JetBlue aircraft was also hit by a bullet.
UN. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the agency documented 20 armed clashes and more roadblocks affecting humanitarian operations during the violence Monday. The Port-au-Prince airport will remain closed until Nov. 18, and Dujarric said the UN will divert flights to the country's second airport in the northern, more peaceful, city of Cap Haïtien. Slashed access to the epicenter of the violence, Port-au-Prince, is likely to be devastating as gangs choking the life out of the capital have pushed Haiti to the brink of famine. Dujarric warned that cutting off flights would mean "limiting the flow of humanitarian aid and humanitarian personnel into the country.
On Tuesday, life in much of Haiti's capital was frozen after the wave of violence, the AP reports. Heavily armed police in armored cars outside the airport checked trucks used for public transportation passing by. Neither the former interim prime minister, Garry Conille, nor the newly inaugurated Alix Didier Fils-Aimé commented on the violence. But Luis Abinader, who as president of the neighboring Dominican Republic has cracked down on Haitian migration, called firing on the airplane terrorism. "This was a terrorist act; the countries that are following and helping Haiti should declare these armed gangs as terrorist groups," Abinader said. (More Haiti stories.)
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