A survivor of the worst gang attack on Haitian journalists says colleagues were cut down by bullets

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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — A survivor of the worst gang attack on Haitian journalists in recent memory described Wednesday seeing colleagues cut down by bullets and reporters with head and chest wounds going an hour or more without help.

Two reporters and one police officer died in Tuesday’s attack at the reopening of Port-au-Prince’s biggest public hospital. Seven journalists covering the event were wounded.

“Some were hit in the chest,” photographer Jean Fregens Regala recalled. “Some of the journalists had part of their face destroyed, some were shot in the mouth, or the head.”

Members of the Viv Ansanm coalition of street gangs, which has taken control of much of Port-au-Prince, had surrounded the hospital and opened fire through a metal gate. The gangs later said they were angry the government had announced the re-opening of the hospital without their permission.

Video from inside at the time of the attack shows a metal gate outside the hospital buckling under a hail of gunfire, as reporters scrambled to try to get inside the building.

“All the journalists started moving to go inside the hospital because we heard that the gunfire was getting close to us,” recalled Regala. “I was hiding behind by the gate to put myself somewhere safe but other journalists were rushing to go inside the hospital and there was non-stop shooting.”

Regala survived only because he remained sheltered behind a concrete guardhouse next to the gate. “If I had rushed and ran, or ran inside the hospital to hide, I am sure I would among the victims.”

“We began calling for help, for just aid, for the victims that were bleeding heavily,” he said. “There was no doctor or nurse around.”

“While the hospital was about to reopen, it had no medical supplies available for giving first aid to the journalist victims and the other victims,” Regala said, adding that since they couldn’t find any gloves they used plastic bags on their hands as substitutes.

Nor did the health minister show up. The area is so dangerous that when police finally responded to the journalists’ calls for help after about two hours, they had to come in with a ladder over a wall from the nearby National Police because the gangs controlled most of the streets.

“These people spent more than an hour losing blood,” Regala said.

The Haitian Association of Journalists issued a statement Tuesday calling on the country’s barely functioning government not to put the lives of reporters — or the public — at risk with such events.

The association called for “authorities to act prudently in their rush to make decisions, to avoid exposing to danger the journalists and others who accompany them at their events.”

Regala said it was clear as soon as they arrived that the area around the hospital was unsafe.

“The fact that the minister of health invited us, you feel that preparations have been made already,” he said. “When we made contact with a police unit, the police told us, they were not aware of the event, of the reopening of the hospital.”

The government had no immediate response to the complaints. Meanwhile, the seven wounded journalists were taken to another hospital.

“I send my sympathies to the people who were victims, the national police and the journalists,” Haiti’s interim president, Leslie Voltaire, said in an address to the nation Tuesday.

Street gangs have taken over an estimated 85% of Port-au-Prince and have also targeted the main international airport and Haiti’s two largest prisons.

Johnson “Izo” André, considered Haiti’s most powerful gang leader and part of the Viv Ansanm group of gangs, posted a video on social media Tuesday claiming responsibility for the attack.

The video said the gang coalition had not authorized the hospital’s reopening.

Haiti has seen journalists targeted before. In 2023, two local journalists were killed in the space of a couple of weeks — radio reporter Dumesky Kersaint was fatally shot in mid-April that year, while journalist Ricot Jean was found dead later that month.

In July, former Prime Minister Garry Conille visited the Hospital of the State University of Haiti, more widely known as the General Hospital, after authorities regained control of it from gangs.

The hospital had been left ravaged and strewn with debris. Walls and nearby buildings were riddled with bullet holes, signaling fights between police and gangs. On Tuesday, Regala said workers were only just painting and cleaning the hospital.

Gang attacks have pushed Haiti’s health system to the brink of collapse, looting, setting fires and destroying medical institutions and pharmacies in the capital. The violence has created a surge in patients and a shortage of resources to treat them.

Regala said he will ignore his family’s pleas to get out of journalism.

“The work needs to continue, to make sure the population is kept informed,” he said.

___ Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

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