(Reuters) – Haitian aid groups backed by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) are temporarily shutting down operations, including some mobile health clinics, following days of extreme violence in parts of the Caribbean nation’s capital Port-au-Prince.
“In a matter of days, violence escalated dramatically in Port-au-Prince, particularly affecting neighborhoods where the IRC collaborates with local organizations to provide vital services,” the aid group said on Thursday.
The IRC launched its Haiti response plan last December and works with a number of local groups around the capital, where much of the violence has taken place.
Ann Lee, co-founder of U.S.-based crisis response group CORE, which is still operating in Haiti, said many aid groups had left as costs rise, financial aid dwindles and staff operates under increasingly life-threatening conditions.
“We have a staff member who lost her daughter because she was having a seizure and couldn’t get to the hospital,” she said. “We have an employee whose brother was beheaded.”
Lee said there was not a single member of CORE’s 100-person Haiti team who did not know a victim of the violence.
