PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The U.S. government on Thursday airlifted more than 30 stranded Americans out of the Haitian capital, as the gang violence racking this city showed no signs of abating and an already dire humanitarian crisis worsened.
The government-organized helicopter flights out of Port-au-Prince began Wednesday, carrying more than 15 U.S. citizens, a State Department spokesperson said, and an estimated 30 Americans will be able to leave on the flights each day that they operate.
They’re being taken to the neighboring Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti. Officials said those who are airlifted out will be responsible for organizing their onward travel from the Dominican capital of Santo Domingo to the United States.
The U.S. government on Thursday also flew more than 60 U.S. citizens from Cap-Haïtien, a city on Haiti’s northern coast, to Miami International Airport, according to a State Department spokesperson. More than 30 citizens were evacuated from the city to Florida over the weekend.
It is uncertain how long the airlifts will last.
“The overall security situation, availability and reliability of commercial transportation, and U.S. citizen demand will all influence the degree to which we are able to help U.S. citizens depart Haiti,” said the State Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under terms set by the agency.
The State Department has since 2020 advised Americans against traveling to Haiti, and long urged those in the country to leave while commercial means were still available.
Those options effectively evaporated this month when heavily armed gangs attacked the main airport here, shutting it down and locking out Prime Minister Ariel Henry. Henry was returning from Nairobi to finalize a deal for a U.N.-approved, Kenyan-led international police force for Haiti.
The embattled Henry said last week that he would resign once a transitional presidential council and interim prime minister were named. But there has not yet been a final agreement on who will make up the panel, which is tasked with leading the country to elections.
As the violence has intensified, several embassies and international institutions have reduced their footprints, evacuating personnel to the Dominican Republic. Few countries are evacuating other citizens. Several U.S. lawmakers have organized flights for their own constituents.
State Department spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters Wednesday that the U.S. government is “relieved when any American citizen” makes it out safely, but operations organized outside of the agency “can be high-risk.”
He said nearly 1,600 Americans have registered with their presence in Haiti with the U.S. Embassy here. But he stressed that not everyone who has done so is necessarily seeking departure assistance.
State Department officials have said it’s difficult to determine how many people with U.S. citizenship are currently in Haiti. They believe the voluntary registrations represent only a portion of the larger community.
In recent days, armed gangs, which control 80 percent of the capital, have targeted Haiti’s central bank and the wealthy neighborhood of Petion-Ville in the hills above the city. The country’s outgunned police forces managed to repel the attack on the bank.
The paramilitary groups, which have filled the power vacuum opened by the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, have blocked the main roads leading out of Port-au-Prince and attacked ports, making travel by land or sea prohibitively dangerous.
Gang violence in recent years here has displaced more than 362,000 people. The International Organization for Migration reports observing almost 17,000 people fleeing Port-au-Prince from March 8 to March 14, most of them heading south.
“Many of these are families,” Ulrika Richardson, the United Nations’ resident and humanitarian coordinator for Haiti, told reporters Thursday. “They’ve had to flee multiple times. The level of trauma, fatigue and suffering among these families is extremely alarming, and it’s very, very painful.”
Jean-Martin Bauer, the World Food Program representative here, said “the needs in Haiti are very high,” but violence has prevented staff from reaching some of the most desperate places, including the neighborhood of Carrefour, where thousands have been displaced.
Staff are continuing to work, he told The Washington Post, but fear for their safety. Nearly half of the people in this country of 11 million face acute food insecurity.
“You have all the ingredients of a major crisis,” Bauer said. “Time is running out.”
John Hudson in Washington contributed to this report.