CNN –
Air traffic at Port-au-Prince airport in Haiti's capital was disrupted for the second day in a row by heavy gunfire nearby, as the Caribbean nation grapples with increasing gang violence and political instability.
The U.S. Embassy in Haiti issued a security alert Friday, warning of gunfire and traffic disruptions near the domestic and international terminals of Toussaint Louverture International Airport and surrounding areas, including a hotel and the Central Directorate of Criminal Investigation.
“The U.S. Embassy is temporarily halting travel of official U.S. personnel to the airport and directing all U.S. personnel at the airport to remain there,” the embassy said.
It comes a day after shootings broke out in the Haitian capital, leading to flight cancellations and an attack on a police station that left at least four people dead.
American Airlines announced Thursday that it has suspended its daily service between Miami and Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince.
“We will continue to monitor the situation with safety in mind and adjust our operations as necessary,” spokeswoman Laura Masvidal told CNN.
Haitian airline Sunrise Airways told CNN it had “suspended all flights until further notice to ensure the safety of passengers, ground crew and aircraft.”
Rapid gunfire near the airport “damaged some aircraft and endangered domestic terminal users,” according to Sunrise Airways.
A U.S. flight carrying dozens of Haitian deportees was also canceled, a source familiar with the operation and a lawyer for one of the deportees said.
Immigration lawyer Philip Issa told CNN on Friday that his client was deported and returned to detention centers after boarding the plane in Miami on Thursday.
“It's baffling that we continue to deport people to Haiti when conditions are so dire,” he said, while complaining that U.S. authorities had neither provided food for the detainees nor released them since 4 p.m. the previous day.
CNN has reached out to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for comment.
Haiti has been hit by a wave of unrest and gang violence in recent years.
Warring gangs control much of Port-au-Prince and cut off important supply lines to the rest of the country. Gang members have also terrorized metropolitan populations, forcing about 200,000 people to flee their homes amid waves of indiscriminate killings, kidnappings, arson and rape.
About 1,100 people were killed, injured or kidnapped in January alone, in what the United Nations described as the most violent month in two years.
According to a report by the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BIUH), more than 8,400 people were victims of such violence last year.
After the assassination of former President Jovenel Moise in 2021, waves of crime and violence began to sweep across Haiti.
Public disappointment with Prime Minister Ariel Henry has grown over his failure to contain the unrest, particularly after he failed to call elections supposedly scheduled for last month, citing escalating violence.
On Wednesday, Henry told leaders of other Caribbean nations during a regional summit that he would hold the election no later than August 31 next year, his first confirmation of when the vote would finally take place.
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Leaders of the CARICOM regional bloc – a political and economic grouping of 20 developing countries and mostly island states – agreed to send a team to assess Haiti's electoral needs.
A powerful Haitian gang leader said the shootings that broke out across Port-au-Prince on Thursday were aimed at toppling Henry's government, several media outlets reported.
Jimmy Cherizier, known as “Barbecue,” said in a video shared on social media that the battle “won’t just bring down the Ariel [Henry] According to international news agencies and Haitian media, “they are changing the entire system.” CNN cannot independently verify the authenticity of the video.
An attack on the Bon Repos police station north of Port-au-Prince left at least four people dead and three injured on Thursday, a security source told CNN.
Three other people were injured in separate attacks across the capital – one at the airport, a second near a prison in downtown Port-au-Prince and a third inside the prison, the security source said.
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CNN has contacted the Haitian National Police for details.
The fighting broke out as Henry visited Kenya to clarify details with Kenyan President William Ruto about the expected deployment of a multinational security assistance mission to Haiti. CNN has reached out to the Haitian government for comment.
The UN-authorized security mission is seen by the international community as key to containing the situation in Haiti. Kenya volunteered to serve as a lead country in this mission.
Kenyan officials signed an agreement Friday to send 1,000 police officers to Haiti as part of the security mission.
“From Kenya, we are ready for this deployment and I ask all other partners around the world to step up so that we can respond in a timely manner,” Ruto said on Friday.
Henry thanked Kenya for agreeing to lead the mission and said that after six months of fine-tuning, “we are finally signing. It is the final step.”
The signing of the agreement is intended to comply with a court ruling by Kenya's Supreme Court that delayed the deployment of troops in January after determining that a reciprocal agreement with Haiti was necessary.
The United States intends to provide $200 million for the Multinational Security Assistance Mission to support the Haitian National Police “with planning, intelligence, airlift capacity, communications, and medical equipment and services,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last week.