American missionaries trapped in Haiti are begging to be rescued as criminal gangs violently wreak havoc in the nation’s capital.
For the last two weeks, attacks at police stations, prisons and the airport have been the culmination of a catastrophic humanitarian crisis taking place in the country. Nearly 1,200 people have been killed and more than 700 injured in recent days.
It has forced the U.S. to evacuate non-essential personnel. But for some Americans, there is no way out.
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Missionary Jill Dolan, who helps run Love A Neighbor, a children’s home in Haiti, and her family are trapped there, sheltering in a makeshift motel in the capital of Port-au-Prince, the New York Post reports.
According to a Facebook update from Love A Neighbor, Dolan, her husband, Ryan, and their adopted teenage children were on their way to a wedding in Florida when armed gangs took over the airport.
All flights were canceled and travel back to their home in a mountain village was impossible.
Dolan said she is in contact with the U.S. Embassy, but little help has been offered.
“We’ve contacted agencies to extract us out, they have just said it’s way too dangerous where you are, you have to stay put,” she told CBS News.
“My fear is that we will be caught in the middle of something really dangerous. We’re already on the front lines of it, we’re in a bad area,” she told the New York Post. “It’s kind of depressing. The gunfire never stops.”
Port-au-Prince is the center of political tension as Prime Minister Ariel Henry fights to stay in power while gangs demand his resignation.
Many Haitians are angry that general elections have not been held in nearly a decade. They claim that Henry was never elected and does not represent the people.
As CBN News reported, armed gangs have launched large-scale coordinated assaults against multiple government buildings and the presidential palace, after attacking prisons last week and freeing close to 5,000 inmates.
Street battles between the gangs and police have crippled Haiti’s fragile economy with United Nations officials saying half of the country’s more than 11 million inhabitants don’t have enough to eat, and 1.5 million are starving.
Reports also describe decaying bodies piling in the streets as there is no one to pick up the corpses.
Gang leader Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier has claimed responsibility for the attacks and says he aims to force Henry from office.
He has promised that chaos will continue if the citizens are left out of the process.
“We Haitians have to decide who is going to lead the country and what model of government we want,” he said.
Dr. David Vanderpool, who heads a ministry to Haiti called LiveBeyond, said, “This is sort of the culmination of gangs running the country for the last three or four years. The government has collapsed. The president was assassinated in ’21. The judiciary was also terminated as well as parliament. So there’s not been an effective government in place since 2021 and the gangs have had full run of the country.”
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Reprinted with permission from cbn.com. Copyright © 2024 The Christian Broadcasting Network Inc. All rights reserved.
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