Spirit Airlines Plane Shot at in Haiti and Forced to Divert

A day after the prime minister of Haiti was fired, the airport in Port-au-Prince was closed because of the attack on the aircraft. A JetBlue plane was also struck.

A Spirit Airlines flight attempting to land in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, was shot at on Monday and forced to divert, marking a sharp escalation in the violence that has gripped the nation.

A JetBlue flight from Port-au-Prince was also hit by a bullet on Monday, the airline said, though that was not determined until after the plane had landed safely in New York.

Spirit Airlines Flight 951, which took off from Fort Lauderdale 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 spokesman 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,” Mr. 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 Cap-Haïtien. The plane was taken out of service.

The crew on the JetBlue plane, Flight 935, did not initially report any issues, the airline said, but an inspection later found that a bullet had hit the plane’s exterior. JetBlue said it was suspending all flights to and from Haiti through Dec. 2 and investigating the episode.

Flight monitoring websites showed a JetBlue plane turning around and heading away from Haiti, as the Port-au-Prince airport was quickly shut down.

The gunfire that struck the Spirit Airlines plane 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.

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.

American Airlines canceled flights to and from Haiti until Thursday afternoon.

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 on board, Jean-David Desrouleaux, told The Miami Herald. “A few of us understood what was happening.”

Late last month, a United Nations helicopter with three crew members and 15 passengers on board was shot at 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 ruling Haiti until elections can be held to select a president.

The prime minister, Garry Conille, was hired in late May to help restore order in Haiti, where a coalition of gangs united earlier 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 earlier 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 up 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 hide-outs and ensure that they face the rule of law. Their time is simply running out.”

As a result of Monday’s plane episode, the president of the Dominican Republic, Luis Abinader, urged U.S. and Haitian authorities to officially designate Haitian gangs as terrorist organizations.

“The Dominican Republic treats and will treat them like terrorists,” Mr. Abinader said during his weekly news conference, noting that the flight was hit seven or eight times.

“It’s a terrorist act.”

David C. Adams, Hogla Enecia and Erin Mendell contributed reporting.