Flight 951, which took off from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince, was diverted to Santiago, in the Dominican Republic, where an inspection revealed what looked like bullet holes, according to Tommy Fletcher, a spokesperson for the airline.
The flight landed safely at 11:30 a.m. Two other flights bound for Port-au-Prince were then also diverted, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
“An inspection revealed evidence of damage to the aircraft consistent with gunfire,” Fletcher said in a statement. “One flight attendant on board reported minor injuries and is being evaluated by medical personnel.”
No passengers were hurt, the airline said. Spirit suspended flights to Port-au-Prince and to the northern Haitian city of Cap-Haïtien. The plane was taken out of service.
The gunfire appeared to come from the ground, though it was unclear who fired the shots. Gangs that have inflicted a campaign of violence in Haiti are also known to be active in the area around the airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) strongly condemned recent attacks on civil aviation in Haiti, underscoring the urgent need for robust security measures to protect air operations. These actions threaten the safety of passengers and crew, disrupt essential air connectivity, and hinder the movement of goods and humanitarian aid critical for the Haitian people. “Safe air operations are vital for Haiti’s connectivity, especially given the island’s isolated geography and its reliance on aviation for essential supplies and mobility,” said Peter Cerdá, IATA’s Regional Vice President for the Americas.
“We call on the Haitian government to take immediate, decisive action to secure air travel routes and restore confidence in the country’s aviation sector.” IATA has reached out to the government offering its support to safely restart operations, emphasizing that secure aviation is a fundamental pillar of economic stability and public safety, especially for countries facing humanitarian crises like Haiti. Ensuring the protection of civil aviation not only maintains vital connections with the outside world but also fosters economic stability and essential aid access.
Videos circulating on social media showed the interior of a plane with what appeared to be several bullet holes, including in an overhead compartment and a panel. The New York Times was not immediately able to verify the videos.
Flight monitoring websites showed a JetBlue plane turning around and heading away from Haiti, as the Port-au-Prince airport was quickly shut down. JetBlue and American Airlines canceled flights to and from Haiti until Thursday afternoon. A JetBlue spokesperson said the airline would monitor the situation to determine whether any more flights needed to be called off.
Officials at Haiti’s aviation authority did not return calls seeking more information.
“We could hear ‘clack, clack, clack’ — the metal inside the plane and the plastic just cracking,” a passenger onboard, Jean-David Desrouleaux, told The Miami Herald. “A few of us understood what was happening.”
The episode is the second time in as many months that an aircraft in Haiti has been hit by gunfire. A United Nations helicopter with three crew members and 15 passengers on board was shot at late last month and hit several times as it flew over a gang-controlled neighborhood in the capital.
In recent weeks, social media has been filled with photographs of a U.S. armored vehicle sent to Haiti to help quell the violence engulfed in flames, reportedly set ablaze by a gang. Gangs fired on two U.S. Embassy vehicles traveling in Port-au-Prince last month.
The attack on the Spirit plane comes a day after Haiti’s interim prime minister was fired by the country’s transition presidential council — a board of nine people that is leading Haiti until elections can be held to select a president.
Prime Minister Garry Conille was hired in late May to help restore order in Haiti, where a coalition of gangs united this year and wreaked havoc on the capital, attacking neighborhoods, police stations, and hospitals.
The airport was closed for several months as violence soared.
Hundreds of police officers from Kenya flew to Haiti in June as part of an international effort to restore peace.
The Kenyan force, known as the MSS — Multinational Security Support — helped the country recover at least some minimal semblance of order, which allowed the airport to reopen this year.
Hundreds of homes around the airport were bulldozed to expand the airport’s security perimeter and to give the gangs fewer places to hide out.
But the gangs have escalated attacks, including outside Port-au-Prince. One gang attacked a community in the rural Artibonite Valley last month, killing more than 100 people.
Godfrey Otunge, the Kenyan police official who is commander of the multinational force, said in a statement that the force was still in the deployment phase and was transitioning to the “decisive operations phase.”
Last week, statements by the multinational force stressed that officers had brought peace back to Pont-Sondé, where the massacre in the valley occurred, and had made important strides, such as opening roads that had been under gang control. The deployment “shall strive to ensure that for once local Haitians will enjoy their Christmas festivities in peace,” one recent statement said, adding that it was putting gang members on notice.
“We are coming for them,” the statement said. “We will smoke them from their enclaves and hideouts and ensure that they face the rule of law. Their time is simply running out.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.