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A devastating new wave of gang violence has torn through residential neighborhoods north of Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince, forcing more than 5,000 residents to flee their homes since Sunday, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) has confirmed. The outbreak of bloodshed is the latest escalation of a years-long crisis that has kept the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation trapped in chronic instability, as heavily armed criminal organizations control large swathes of territory and carry out widespread human rights abuses including extrajudicial killings, sexual violence, looting, and mass kidnappings. The country’s security collapse accelerated dramatically in early 2024, when coordinated gang attacks destabilized the government enough to force the resignation of Haiti’s unelected prime minister.

Local human rights advocate Fritznel Pierre told Magik 9, a Port-au-Prince-based radio station, on Wednesday that the latest surge of violence, which erupted on May 10, has left widespread destruction in its wake: private residences have been ransacked and burned to the ground, while local commercial shops and public schools have been extensively vandalized. For medical providers operating in the conflict zone, the scale of casualties has overwhelmed existing care capacity. “We’ve never seen so many gunshot victims in such a short period of time,” explained Sarah Chateau, operations director for the medical humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres, MSF) in Haiti.

As gang clashes spread across northern neighborhoods, multiple medical facilities have been forced to halt services and evacuate all clinical and non-clinical staff. Chateau told AFP that MSF’s facilities have absorbed a flood of patients transferred from other clinics that were forced to close, including Fontaine Hospital, which sits close to the center of the ongoing clashes. “Every time we open the gates to admit new patients, there are members of the public rushing to come inside,” she said. Even facilities that remain operational are not safe from crossfire, Chateau added, describing the chaotic evacuation of patients from other facilities as an extremely high-stress operation, with stray bullets falling across the area even within medical facility perimeters. “We weren’t any safer inside. One of our security guards was hit by a stray bullet,” she confirmed.

On Wednesday, Farhan Haq, deputy spokesperson for the United Nations Secretary-General, reported that medical teams have treated more than 40 people for gunshot wounds in less than 12 hours. He added that the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is currently mobilizing a coordinated cross-agency humanitarian response to meet the urgent needs of displaced residents and injured civilians, though operations remain challenging amid the rapidly shifting and highly volatile security situation.

The international community has attempted to address Haiti’s security crisis for more than a year: the UN approved a multinational security support mission in 2023 to assist under-resourced Haitian police in pushing back against gang expansion, but the deployment has been hampered by chronic underfunding and inadequate equipment, leading to inconsistent results. Later that year, the UN Security Council voted to restructure the mission into a more heavily resourced anti-gang intervention force. To date, a 400-strong military contingent from Chad has already arrived in Port-au-Prince to support the operation.

This latest outbreak of violence is the second major displacement event in Haiti’s capital so far this year. Clashes across the same northern districts in March and April displaced nearly 8,000 people, according to UN data, underscoring the persistent deterioration of security even after the deployment of international support.

On Thursday, Italy’s foreign ministry confirmed a tragic deep-sea diving accident in the Maldives that claimed the lives of five Italian nationals, marking the deadliest single diving incident the Indian Ocean archipelago has recorded in modern memory. As of Thursday’s initial search operation, local security forces had recovered one body from the deep cave system where the group was exploring.

World-renowned for its powdery white sandbanks, crystal-clear turquoise waters and pristine coral reef systems, the Maldives has long held top rank as a luxury bucket-list destination for scuba diving enthusiasts. Travelers from across the globe flock to the island nation to explore remote dive sites, often basing their trips on isolated island resorts or purpose-built liveaboard dive vessels that access less crowded, more challenging dive spots.

In an official brief confirmation of the incident, Italy’s foreign ministry stated that the fatal accident unfolded on a diving expedition in Vaavu Atoll, a remote diving region located south of the Maldivian capital, Male. Initial investigations indicate the group was attempting to navigate submerged cave systems at a depth of approximately 50 meters when the incident occurred. After the team failed to return to the surface from their expedition, local authorities were alerted to the emergency.

Local Maldivian officials emphasized that this accident is the worst single diving fatality event in the history of the nation, which is made up of 1,192 small coral islands spread across 800 kilometers of the Indian Ocean along the equator. Immediately after the five divers were reported missing Thursday afternoon, the Maldives National Defence Force (MNDF) launched a large-scale multi-asset search operation, deploying both fixed-wing aircraft and high-speed search speedboats to the area.

In an update on the search, the MNDF confirmed that the first recovered body was found inside the target cave system. Authorities currently believe the remaining four missing divers are also trapped within the same cave system, which extends to a maximum depth of roughly 60 meters. In a further detail that may shed light on the accident, local police confirmed that Vaavu Atoll was under a yellow weather warning Thursday, with rough sea conditions reported across the region that posed risks to small passenger vessels and fishing craft.

As of Thursday night, a MNDF coastguard vessel remained on site coordinating search efforts around the clock, with additional specialist coastguard dive teams dispatched to the area to assist with the challenging deep-cave recovery operation.

While diving and water activity-related fatalities are statistically rare in the South Asian island nation, public records show a steady stream of fatal incidents over recent years. In December of last year, a British female tourist died during a recreational dive, and her 71-year-old husband suffered a fatal illness just days later, grief-stricken after the incident. In June the previous year, a 26-year-old Japanese tourist disappeared after a diving trip near the capital Male. Local Maldivian media analysis of public safety data shows that over the past six years, at least 112 tourists have died in marine-related incidents across the archipelago, with 42 of those fatalities linked directly to diving or snorkeling activities.