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For the first time in months, traffic is driving on a major road, passing through a gang-ravaged neighborhood near Port-au-Prince.
As a gang leader called for a truce to help rescue efforts, this week it was safer to transport rescue trucks from the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince to the area destroyed by the earthquake last week.
The death toll on August 14 was 7.2 Earthquake More than 2,200 people and more than 340 people are missing.
Aid earthquake area Due to the outbreak of gang violence on the outskirts of the capital of Haiti, which hindered national and international efforts to transport basic supplies, most of the goods in the southwest of the island are transported by air for safety reasons.
All ground vehicles trying to reach the affected area must drive along the highway that passes through the area. Be beaten by a gang The Martissant community west of Port-au-Prince.
Jimmy Cherizier (Jimmy Cherizier) is the leader of the G9 Revolutionary Army gang. His name is “Barbecue”. He told Al Jazeera that there is peace in Matisse and aid is being allowed to flow.
“We actually know that the victims need water, food and sanitation supplies.”
“Do your best to help. Your help will be greatly appreciated. What we want is to help our brothers and sisters who are in a very difficult situation after the earthquake, which is why we say,’It’s better to give less than nothing’,” he said.
This community has always been a bloody battlefield between the rivals of Ti Lapli and the Krisla gang. But last Friday, Prime Minister Ariel Henry told Al Jazeera that the situation improved after the gang truce to allow aid to pass. Al Jazeera producer Jeremy Dupin confirmed this development in a conversation with Cherizil.
At the same time, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and other organization partners are urgently working to distribute aid to those in need. The United Nations World Food Program​​(WFP) is transporting 830 metric tons of U.S. International Development’s food supply from Port-au-Prince—enough to feed more than 62,000 people for a month and distribute it to the affected areas.
Tim Callahan, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s aid response team, told Al Jazeera that the “last mile distribution” of aid to the earthquake zone is currently being planned, coordinated and provided. The last step of providing assistance to the affected people may prove difficult.
“If you show up with a truck of food and you have no plan; you have not coordinated with the local authorities and the local police, you can see some things that people will surround the truck, because again, so far, what I have seen is Most people just want to help. They want to hurry up,” Callahan said.
Al Jazeera witnessed rescue trucks passing through Matisse, and traffic began to flow in ways not seen in the area for months.
These trucks are transporting much-needed assistance for earthquake survivors living in the small mountain towns of the Tiburon Peninsula.
In the province of Grand’Anse, near the town of Duchity, about 100 farmers live by the highway in a slender tent built of wooden poles and sheets. The devastating earthquake destroyed their houses, crops and concrete-lined deep holes used to collect and store rainwater.
Evelya Michele, the mother of five children living in the camp, said: “We are with the children; I don’t know how many there are, but we need to feed them, we need food, water and clothes. They cry because they are hungry and thirsty. We need medicine, and now we use this place as a refuge, then we really need to help ourselves to feed our children.”
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