LThe de facto Prime Minister Dr. Garry Conille was on Monday, July 29, 2024 at the State University Hospital of Haiti, also called the General Hospital, to film an interview with a CNN journalist.
It seems that the head of the Prime Minister’s Office was using the dilapidated state of the oldest and most popular medical center in the capital, abandoned and turned into a hideout for bandits, to expose the calamitous situation in the country.
According to journalists from some online media, just at the end of the recording of the interview, when everyone was preparing to leave the hospital site including the Prime Minister’s motorcade, suddenly armed bandits opened fire with automatic weapons shots which were heard with resounding noise.
And the Haitian and Kenyan police officers who accompanied the Prime Minister quickly took the necessary steps to secure the head of government, whose motorcade left at lightning speed.
However, on the evening of July 29, the Haitian National Police (PNH) and the Multinational Security Support Mission (MMAS) issued a joint statement to indicate that ” Today, Monday, July 29, 2024, Prime Minister Garry Conille, accompanied by the Director General of the Haitian National Police (PNH) Rameau Normil and the Commander of the MSSM Force Godfrey Otunge visited the premises of the General Hospital to make an assessment. The PM was accompanied by CNN for coverage where towards the end of his interview, two gunshots were heard in the neighboring neighborhood. After the PM successfully completed the interview, he left the hospital with his security team, but while he was at one of the corners of the hospital, security agents fired a few shots to cover the PM’s exit. The PM and his team safely left the hospital and were escorted to his office. Later, the PNH and the MSS contingent followed the location where the gunshots were fired from the neighborhood and pacified the area.
Police Chief Rameau Normil, who was also present on the scene, himself announced during a press briefing on Tuesday, July 30, 2024 that “What happened yesterday, Monday, near the General Hospital while the motorcade of Prime Minister Garry Conille was leaving the area after a visit to the HUEH, had nothing to do with an attack by armed gangs ».
Normil should provide much more information explaining where the bursts of gunfire that everyone could hear and see on the networks were coming from. And why would police officers, Haitians and Kenyans, take cover and try to protect their position? So who should we believe, the police or the online media journalists in these two interpretations of the July 29 incident?
