FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – The Federal Aviation Administration put in a temporary ban on all flights from the U.S. to Haiti after a Spirit Airlines jet, flying from Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, sustained gunfire while trying to land in Port-au-Prince on Monday, injuring a flight attendant.
Besides Spirit Airlines Flight 951, a JetBlue flight that departed for Haiti and landed at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport was hit by bullets as well.
After the plane was shot at least four times, the Spirit Airlines pilot aborted the landing and the flight diverted to Santiago, Dominican Republic.
“It was amazingly quick how the pilot got us out of there,” passenger Kevin Adair said.
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The Spirit flight attendant suffered minor injuries.
The FAA ban applies for 30 days and prohibits planes from flying under 10,000 feet over the island nation.
It all comes amid gang violence in Haiti’s capital.
In Port-au-Prince Tuesday, heavily armed police in armored cars outside the airport checked trucks used for public transportation passing by.
Schools were closed, as were banks and government offices. Streets, where just a day before gangs and police were locked in a fierce firefight, were eerily empty, with few driving by other than a motorcycle with a man who had been shot clinging to the back.
The sounds of heavy gunfire still echoed through the streets — a reminder that despite political maneuvering by Haiti’s elites and a strong push by the international community to restore peace, the country’s toxic slate of gangs kept its firm hold on much of the Caribbean nation.
The United Nations estimates that gangs control 85% of the capital, Port-au-Prince. A U.N.-backed mission led by Kenyan police to quell gang violence struggles with a lack of funding and personnel, prompting calls for a U.N. peacekeeping mission.
The violence comes after a transitional council, tasked with restoring democratic order to Haiti, which hasn’t held elections since 2016, decided to fire the country’s interim prime minister, Garry Conille, who often was at odds with the council during his six months in office.
Despite Conille declaring the move illegal, the council rapidly swore in businessman Alix Didier Fils-Aimé as the new interim prime minister. Fils-Aimé promised to work with international partners to restore peace and hold long awaited elections, a vow also made by his predecessor.
But many Haitians, like 43-year-old Martha Jean-Pierre, have little taste for the political fighting, which experts say only give gangs more freedom to continue expanding their control as Haiti teeters on the brink of famine.
Jean-Pierre was among those to brave the streets of Port-au-Prince on Tuesday to sell the plantains, carrots, cabbage and potatoes she carried in a basket on her head. She had no choice, she said — selling was the only way she could feed her children.
“What good is a new prime minister if there’s no security, if I can’t move freely and sell my goods,” she said, nodding to her basket of vegetables. “This is my bank account, this is what my family depend(s) on.”
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Associated Press video journalist Pierre-Richard Luxama contributed to this report.