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VIENNA (AP) — Vienna’s famed coffeehouses have embraced the Eurovision Song Contest. They have also been touched by tensions over Israel’s inclusion in the sequin-drenched pop music competition.

When officials announced a list of “Eurofan Cafes” — Vienna coffee shops offering food and music from competing countries — Israel was initially left out.

MQ Kantine, a modern café in the city’s arty museums quarter, offered to step in. Now it has falafel, bagels with lox and kosher wine on the menu, a string of small Israeli flags hanging from the ceiling — and a police officer outside the door.

Security is tight across Vienna during the international music contest, whose “United by Music” slogan rings sightly hollow this year. Five countries are boycotting because Israel is taking part. Pro-Palestinian activists are planning a protest concert — one of several Eurovision alternatives across Europe — and an anti-Israel march before Saturday’s grand final.

At MQ Kantine, volunteers take turns to monitor for potential trouble. But so far the mood has been supportive, said Daniel Kapp, a PR consultant and pro-Israel campaigner.

“It’s beautiful,” he said, as people drank coffee and beer on the café terrace in the spring sunshine, though he noted that the police officer on duty showed that all is “not entirely normal.”

“My feeling is that Austria to a certain degree has learned from its history,” Kapp said, referring to the deadly antisemitism under the Nazis before and during World War II. “Which is why the support for Israel is a lot more normal than it is in other countries.”

Israel has competed in Eurovision for more than 50 years, and won four times. But its participation has been contested since it launched a war in Gaza after 1,200 people were killed in a Hamas-led cross-border attack on Oct. 7, 2023. More than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which operates under the Hamas-run government and whose detailed records are viewed as generally reliable by the international community.

Israel’s government has repeatedly defended its campaign as a response to the Oct. 7 attack. But a number of experts, including those commissioned by a United Nations body, have said that Israel’s offensive in Gaza amounts to genocide. Israel, home to many Holocaust survivors and their relatives, has vigorously denied the claim.

The latest Israel-Hezbollah war in Lebanon and the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran have driven tensions still higher.

The 2024 Eurovision contest in Malmo, Sweden, and last year’s event in Basel, Switzerland, saw pro-Palestinian protests that called for Israel to be expelled. Five countries — Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Spain — pulled out of the 2026 contest after organizers allowed Israel to compete.

The tensions have produced a Eurovision of two halves. An upbeat party atmosphere prevails inside the Wiener Stadthalle arena and in the separate Eurovision Village fan zone. But getting in means passing through a ring of steel, with searches, scanners and a ban on all bags inside the arena. Armed police are a very visible presence on the streets.

Awareness of risk from terror plots is high in the city after a 21-year-old Austrian man accused of pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group pleaded guilty to plotting to attack a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna in 2024.

Israeli singer Noam Bettan told Israeli media that, like last year’s Israeli competitor Yuval Raphael, he practiced performing while being booed. There were scattered shouts amid the cheers when he performed in the first Eurovision semifinal on Tuesday. He secured a spot in Saturday’s final by being one of the top 10 finishers in voting by viewers and national juries.

Organizers said four people were removed from the 10,000-strong audience for disruptive behavior.

Austrian Eurovision fan Ivo Herzl, who attended the semifinal, said “the vibe was incredibly positive.” He is showing support for Israel by making and selling Mazel Lov T-shirts — a play on “mazel tov,” a Hebrew and Yiddish phrase of congratulations.

“Vienna has always been a city of tolerance,” Herzl said. “It’s the city of music and we’ll always do everything possible for everyone to enjoy a musical event.”

Some Israeli fans said they were reassured by the tight security. Oz Yona, attending his first Eurovision, said he had experienced “no hate” and felt Austria took antisemitism seriously.

He came with friends to cheer for Israel, though he was not optimistic about Bettan’s chances — for musical rather than political reasons.

“I don’t think he will win,” Yona said. “Finland is better this year. Greece is better this year. We have a good song, but not a winning song.”

Birgitta Peterson and Kristina Nilsson, who wear matching pink bomber jackets and call themselves The Swedish Ladies, love to explore new cities and meet up each year with their “Eurovision family” of fellow fans. They plan to wave Israeli flags at Saturday’s final, after Swedish contestant Felicia said earlier this year that she didn’t think Israel should be in the contest.

They say tensions over Israel have divided a fan community long known for its friendliness and embrace of diversity.

“The wounds are very deep at the moment,” Nilsson said.

“This event should really be about ‘united by music’ and happiness,” she added. “That’s what Eurovision is all about.”

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JERUSALEM (AP) — Nickolay Mladenov, the high representative for the International Board of Peace overseeing the Israel-Hamas ceasefire on Wednesday reiterated longstanding demands that Hamas and other militant groups, calling them “not negotiable.”

Seven months ago, the U.S.-brokered ceasefire agreed to by Israel and Hamas included disarmament as a key provision but little progress has been made. Negotiations have centered around details, some of which Mladenov referenced on Wednesdaay, about gun buybacks and small arms for law enforcement.

But Mladenov also said Hamas could have a role in post-war Gaza if they disarmed. “We are not asking Hamas to disappear as a political movement,” he said.

He criticized the group for consolidating power in parts of Gaza and said they were doing it “to squeeze better terms of a negotiation.”

The remarks conflict with some of Israel’s aims to destroy the militant group that has governed Gaza for two decades.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Nickolay Mladenov, the top diplomat overseeing the U.S.-brokered ceasefire deal in Gaza, was in Jerusalem on Wednesday seeking to advance the ceasefire deal that Israel and Hamas agreed to more than seven months ago.

His appearance comes as efforts to advance the phased ceasefire have stalled, without much progress on its key tenets, including demilitarization and reconstruction. The truce envisioned Hamas handing over its weapons, Israeli forces withdrawing and rebuilding destroyed swaths of the coastal enclave after more than two years of war.

Instead, the seven months since the ceasefire have seen Israel and Hamas trade accusations of violations. Aid groups say Israel has not allowed the promised amount of aid in. Hamas has not disarmed and remains in control of roughly half the strip.

Israel has stepped up its attacks in Gaza in recent days, since the U.S.-Iran ceasefire, and many Palestinians fear a return of more airstrikes and full-scale war may be imminent.

Mladenov is a longtime U.N. diplomat and consultant who has also been a government minister in his home country, Bulgaria. Last year he was named high representative for Gaza for the President Donald Trump-led International Board of Peace designed to oversee post-war plans for the strip.

The Israel-Hamas war began when Hamas-led militants stormed Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 as hostages. Israel’s ensuing offensive has killed over 72,724 Palestinians, including at least 846 since a ceasefire took hold last October.

That’s according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants but says around half the deaths were women and children. The figures by the ministry, which is part of the Hamas-led government, are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts.

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By Gabriel Stargardter and Raphael Satter

PARIS, May 13 (Reuters) – French authorities are examining whether a foreign interference campaign aimed at a hard-left party ahead of March’s municipal elections was carried out at least in part by an obscure Israeli firm called BlackCore, according to three sources familiar with the matter.

French intelligence agencies are now investigating who may have commissioned the alleged BlackCore campaign to smear three France Unbowed candidates in a campaign that included deceptive websites and social media accounts alleging criminal behaviour, as well as disparaging digital ads, two of the sources said.

Reuters could not independently establish who was behind BlackCore, verify where it was based, or find any reference to the company in Israeli corporate records.

BlackCore did not respond to repeated messages sent via a contact form on its website and its LinkedIn page – both of which were subsequently taken offline.

French prosecutors either did not return messages or declined comment about BlackCore’s alleged activities. Viginum, a disinformation detection service within the French prime minister’s office, also declined to comment.

BlackCore has described itself on its website and LinkedIn page as “an elite influence, cyber, and technology company built for the modern era of information warfare.” It said it provided governments and political campaigns with “cutting-edge strategies, advanced tools, and robust security to shape narratives.”     

Reuters reviewed BlackCore documents in which the company claimed credit for a separate social media operation carried out on behalf of an African government. The documents were undated but referred to an operation that began in January this year and extended for 14 weeks. An individual provided the documents to Reuters on condition that certain details about them were withheld.

After Reuters asked Facebook owner Meta Platforms about the African operation outlined in the documents, the company said the “network” behind it was tied to the disinformation campaign launched ahead of the French municipal elections. Meta stopped short of identifying a culprit. 

Meta told Reuters it had removed a network of accounts and pages for violating its rules against “coordinated inauthentic behavior.” It said the rogue activity originated in Israel and “primarily targeted France.”

Two of the sources who had knowledge of BlackCore’s alleged French disinformation campaign said they were also aware of the company’s work in Africa, without elaborating.

Google and TikTok independently identified aspects of the French disinformation operation while policing their respective networks, according to two other sources. Neither provided further detail.

Alphabet-owned Google did not return messages seeking comment. 

TikTok did not directly address questions about BlackCore but said it had removed an account identified by Reuters as having promoted one of the bogus sites used in the alleged French smear campaign. The account broke its rules on deceptive behaviour, TikTok said.

LFI DIVIDES OPINION

The operation targeted Marseille mayoral candidate Sébastien Delogu, Toulouse contender François Piquemal and their Roubaix counterpart David Guiraud, according to French authorities and the candidates themselves.

Its broad outlines were first exposed by newspaper Le Monde in March, when Viginum revealed a “foreign digital interference” scheme with “limited” reach targeting a “French political party” and its candidates in Marseille, Toulouse and Roubaix. 

Satirical and investigative news outlet Le Canard ​Enchaine later reported authorities suspected an Israeli firm, but did not name it. 

BlackCore’s alleged disinformation campaign underlines how fraught even local elections have become as France and other nations struggle with increased political polarization and threats to democracy. 

Polls show France Unbowed – known by its French acronym LFI – divides opinion.

The pro-Palestinian party is regularly accused of antisemitism by some Jewish community leaders and political rivals – claims it denies – while many business figures fret about its high tax-and-spend policies.

Still, LFI retains a solid 10-15% base of support that analysts say could be enough for it to reach the second round of France’s next presidential election, due to be held in April 2027.

With polls suggesting the far-right National Rally party is almost certain to make the second round, French centrists fear a potential far-right versus hard-left run-off.

LFI said Viginum alerted it to foreign interference aimed at its candidates, and said it was cooperating with investigators.

“We expect the upcoming (presidential) election to be the scene of attacks of this kind,” the party said in a statement.

“Technological developments will probably multiply this risk considerably.”

Israel’s Foreign Ministry told Reuters it was not aware of BlackCore. It did not address the question of whether the French government had been in touch over the election interference allegations. France’s foreign ministry did not respond to requests for comment. 

CANDIDATES SMEARED 

Delogu, who withdrew from the second round of the Marseille election to avoid splitting the left-wing vote, filed a defamation lawsuit in March after a now-extinct site named “Sophie’s Blog” targeted him, alluding to unspecified sexual misconduct. QR codes – barcodes that can be scanned with a smartphone to send users to a website – were also posted around Marseille, pointing to the blog. Reuters was unable to identify or contact the blog’s author.

Yones Taguelmint, Delogu’s lawyer, declined to share the complaint, but confirmed that it related to the blog and the QR codes. The Marseille prosecutor’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

Guiraud, who won his election in Roubaix, was targeted by “Facebook pages linked to the same ecosystem,” Viginum said. Guiraud did not respond to requests for comment.

Piquemal, a lawmaker who led a leftist alliance in Toulouse but lost in a narrow run-off vote, said he went to police after he was targeted by anonymous social media accounts, websites and disparaging ads in local newspaper La Depeche du Midi.

Piquemal said he hoped the criminal probe would reveal who was behind the attacks. He said he believed he was targeted for his pro-Gaza advocacy and because he was “capable of winning the third-largest city in France”.

La Depeche, in a March 21 editorial, said it would take legal action against those behind the ads. It did not respond to requests for comment.

Toulouse Prosecutor David Charmatz did not respond to questions about BlackCore, but said Piquemal’s criminal complaints were too recent to have generated any leads. 

After losing the election, Piquemal sought to have the result annulled due to the alleged foreign interference. The Toulouse Administrative Court has yet to deliver a verdict. 

(Additional reporting by Steven Scheer; Editing by Aidan Lewis)

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NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — The European Union’s energy commissioner said Wednesday that while there is no immediate threat to jet fuel supplies, the possibility of a longer-term shortage cannot be ruled out.

Commissioner Dan Jørgensen told reporters that any shortage will depend on how the Iran war and the situation in the Strait of Hormuz will unfold, as well as how airlines will react after some companies — including the German owners of the airline Lufthansa — canceled a significant number of flights.

Fighting around the Strait of Hormuz, from which a fifth of the world’s oil typically passes, has disrupted supplies and caused fuel prices to spike around the world.

While Jørgensen said “we’re not there yet” in terms of a jet fuel shortage, he said the bloc’s executive arm will start talks with member states “on how best to address the situation,” without offering any specifics.

The Iran war has caused the price of jet fuel to more than double in some markets since late February and airlines are particularly vulnerable because fuel costs account for a huge chunk of their operating expenses.

The commissioner said the fact that the bloc has paid 35 billion euros ($41 billion) in additional costs for the same amount of fuel since the start of the Iran war underscores the need for a rapid transition away from fossil fuels.

“Really, this is not an energy crisis. This is a fossil fuel crisis,” Jørgensen said, adding that even though the EU has diversified its energy supply, it has become more energy efficient and has added more renewables since the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Michael Damianos, the energy minister of Cyprus which currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency, said fossil fuels such as natural gas will remain in the bloc’s energy mix in the foreseeable future even as the goal of a 90% drop in greenhouse emissions by 2040 remains firm. He added that natural gas from deposits discovered off Cyprus’ southern coast could reach European markets by late next year, early 2028.

Jørgensen said the EU remains “very committed” to reducing greenhouse gas emissions quickly because “the climate crisis will not go away.”

Over the long term, the EU commissioner said the bloc is in talks with Gulf nations to see how the flow of energy from the region is restored after a negotiated peace with Iran is in place.

Last month, EU Council President Antonio Costa and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the bloc was ready to work with Persian Gulf countries for new projects conveying energy to global markets that wouldn’t be held hostage to war or geopolitical strife.

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LONDON, May 13 (Reuters) – Russia has placed British former defence minister Ben Wallace on a wanted list in connection with an unspecified criminal investigation, state media said on Wednesday, citing the Russian Interior Ministry’s database.

Wallace served as the UK’s defence minister from before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 until August 2023, since when he has continued to advocate for boosting military support for Kyiv and condemned Russian aggression.

The state media reports did not give further details and Wallace did not reply to a request for comment.

Last October, a regional Russian lawmaker called for Wallace to be put on Russia’s international wanted list over comments he made at the Warsaw Security Forum about Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

Speaking at the forum in September, Wallace had recommended helping Ukraine carry out a military strike on the bridge which links southern Russia to Crimea.

“We have to help Ukraine have the long-range capabilities to make Crimea unviable. We need to choke the life out of Crimea. And if we do that, I think Putin will realise he’s got something to lose,” he said. “We need to smash the cursed bridge.”

It is not clear how many foreign officials or public figures are on the Russian Interior Ministry’s database of wanted persons. In 2024, independent news outlet Mediazona said the list included dozens of European politicians and officials.

(Reporting by Alessandra Prentice; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

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By Florence Tan, Jonathan Saul and Phil Stewart

SINGAPORE, May 13 (Reuters) – The trading arm of Vietnam’s state oil company has urged the U.S. Navy to allow a crude oil tanker laden with Iraqi oil to sail through its blockade in the Middle East Gulf to provide a Vietnamese refinery with critical supplies, PVOIL said in a letter on Tuesday.

The U.S. military has expanded its shipping blockade on Iran to include cargoes deemed contraband, although it has said other oil exports from the Gulf are free to sail through. 

The Maltese-flagged Agio Fanourios I supertanker, carrying 2 million barrels of crude oil, sailed out of the Strait of Hormuz on May 10 and was sailing in the Gulf of Oman before making a U-turn on May 11, ship tracking data on the MarineTraffic platform showed on Tuesday.

“U.S. forces redirected the vessel as part of ongoing enforcement of the blockade against Iran,” the U.S. military’s Central Command said in a statement in response to a Reuters query about the tanker.

It was not clear from the statement if the U.S. Navy would eventually allow the vessel to proceed to Vietnam as requested.

The vessel had sailed through the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday using Iran’s designated route for tankers, according to Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency.

The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran has prompted the closure of the Strait of Hormuz with hundreds of ships stranded and global energy supplies disrupted from the critical waterway through which 20% of the world’s energy supplies pass.

“This cargo is of extreme importance to Nghi Son Refinery (NSRP), to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and to the Vietnamese people,” Petrovietnam Oil Corporation (PVOIL) Vice President Hoang Dinh Tung said in a May 12 letter seen by Reuters and sent to U.S. military and diplomatic missions.     

“NSRP’s feedstock inventories are critically low; any further delay risks halting refinery throughput, with cascading consequences for millions of Vietnamese consumers, businesses, public services and industries.” 

PVOIL said it “unequivocally” confirmed that the vessel loaded Iraqi Basra crude sold by Iraq’s state oil company SOMO after the tanker was loaded between April 10 and 14.  

(Reporting by Florence Tan, Jonathan Saul and Phil Stewart; Additional reporting by Timothy Gardner and Idrees Ali; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Tom Hogue)

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BEIJING (AP) — It’s a verbal tightrope American presidents have had to walk for nearly 50 years, where even small slip-ups when stating official U.S. policy toward Taiwan and China can trigger geopolitical alarm bells.

The way the U.S. views Taiwan under the “One China” policy recognizes the Chinese position that Taiwan is part of China, while still allowing for informal U.S. relations with the self-governing island.

It is intended to be vague — built on what’s become known as strategic ambiguity. That is, the U.S. has agreed to ensure Taiwan has the resources to defend itself if China attempts to force a unilateral change, without saying how far it will go militarily to counter Beijing.

As assistant U.S. defense secretary Joseph Nye said in 1995 to Chinese officials wondering how the U.S. would react to a Taiwan crisis: “We don’t know, and you don’t know.”

“The idea was, stick to the very careful language that’s been crafted and don’t vary,” said Mike McCurry, former White House press secretary under Bill Clinton. “Because there are too many people listening and paying attention.”

Carefully balanced to protect Taiwan’s security and sovereignty without promising too much but also not irking Beijing, the policy could again be pushed into the spotlight during President Donald Trump’s visit to China this week. In the past, some U.S. officials have flubbed it, requiring swift diplomatic cleanup.

“It’s the precision of the words,” said John Kirby, who served across multiple Democratic administrations as a spokesman at the State Department and Pentagon and at President Joe Biden’s White House. “They just have to be so extraordinarily precise when you’re talking about Taiwan because, quite frankly, the stakes are enormously high.”

A look at how the Taiwan policy has tripped up presidents:

He suggested four times that the U.S. would intervene militarily if China were to invade Taiwan, forcing White House officials to clarify that he wasn’t undoing decades of precedent.

During an August 2021 ABC News interview, Biden talked about a U.S. commitment to respond militarily if NATO allies were attacked and added, “Same with Taiwan.” The White House later said that U.S. policy toward Taiwan hadn’t changed.

Biden said during a CNN forum that October that the U.S. was committed to defending Taiwan should China attack, resulting in similar White House backtracking.

In a May 2022 news conference in Tokyo, Biden said “yes” when asked if he was willing to use the military to defend Taiwan. “That’s the commitment we made,” he added, forcing Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to reaffirm U.S. commitment to the “One China” policy.

And Biden suggested similarly during a September 2022 interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes,” prompting more White House clarifications.

Trump was president-elect in 2016 when he took a call from Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen — likely the first president to do so since the U.S. severed diplomatic relations with the island in 1979. He later scoffed at the hubbub, posting: “Interesting how the U.S. sells Taiwan billions of dollars of military equipment but I should not accept a congratulatory call.”

The following year, the Trump White House issued a statement about a meeting in Germany between Xi and Trump that described Xi as president of the Republic of China, the formal name for Taiwan — not the correct People’s Republic of China. The event’s White House transcript was later altered to fix the mistake.

“There is a lot of difficulty to navigate a lot of these concepts. However, the reason why that is the case — a lot of misunderstanding and misspeaking — is because those concepts are conceptual traps set up by China,” said Miles Yu, who was principal China policy adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during Trump’s first administration. “You cannot explain something that’s unexplainable.”

Yu, now a senior fellow and director of the China Center at the Hudson Institute, has advocated for more firmly stating the U.S. commitment to defending Taiwan. He said the concept of a “One China” policy or a “One China” principle, as Beijing calls its insistence that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China, was “completely of Chinese making.”

“No one inside the Chinese high command has ever believed there is any ambiguity as to America’s resolve to defend Taiwan,” Yu said.

Instead, he said, the U.S. has long adhered to plans to defend Taiwan in proportion to Chinese threats, as evidenced by Washington repeatedly mobilizing forces to the Taiwan Strait over the years amid heightened tensions.

Today, the Trump White House says there’s been no change in policy but scoffs at the idea of verbal gymnastics required in stating it, noting that Trump has approved major arms sales to Taiwan over the years.

After the Chinese civil war ended in 1949, Washington recognized Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists as China’s leaders, even after that government fled from Beijing to Taiwan. But, under an agreement with Beijing beginning in 1979 with Jimmy Carter, the U.S. began adhering to the “One China” policy.

Carter’s administration spent months in secret negotiations with China to reach the agreement. Yet Carter later said that it “does nothing to prevent” a future president or Congress from “even going to war” to protect Taiwan.

Bill Clinton, during a 1998 roundtable in Shanghai, said he supported the “three no’s”: The U.S. not supporting Taiwan independence; not supporting the “two Chinas” idea, which would be a separate China and Taiwan; and not backing Taiwan’s admittance into international organizations.

But the following year, Clinton said, “You know what I’ve done in the past,” seeming to point to previous U.S. military interventions and suggesting he could do something similar involving Taiwan.

During a 2001 interview with The Associated Press, George W. Bush was asked whether the U.S. might use military force to counter a Chinese attack on Taiwan and answered, “It’s certainly an option.” Bush later told CNN that didn’t mean the U.S. was toughening its stance, saying, “I have said that I will do what it takes to help Taiwan defend itself.”

Five years later, during a state visit to Washington by then-Chinese President Hu Jintao, Bush’s White House announcer mistakenly said the national anthem of the Republic of China would be played, instead of the People’s Republic of China. The correct anthem was ultimately played.

In 1989, George H.W. Bush said during a banquet in China that while the U.S. adheres to “the bedrock principle that there is but one China, we have found ways to address Taiwan constructively without rancor.”

During a 2014 joint news conference in Beijing with Xi, Barack Obama said, “We encourage further progress by both sides of the Taiwan Strait towards building ties, reducing tensions and promoting stability on the basis of dignity and respect.”

Still, getting it right can be tricky.

“Anybody who has been at the State Department, the Pentagon or even the White House podium can tell you: When the issue of Taiwan came up, you went to your notes,” Kirby said. “You didn’t freelance it.”

Yet Kirby recalled that he “got cocky once and didn’t,” mischaracterizing the policy and causing “a little kerfuffle.”

Any big error usually first draws complaints from U.S. policy officials, Kirby said, who aren’t shy with their displeasure: “You’ll be highly encouraged to make a statement correcting it right away.”

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MEXICO CITY, May 12 (Reuters) – One of the U.S. officials who was killed in a car crash in northern Mexico last month, whom sources say were CIA officers, had been seen days earlier carrying a gun in local security office, said Wendy Chavez, head of a specialized unit of the Chihuahua attorney general’s office tasked with investigating the incident.

U.S. officials are generally not permitted to carry firearms in Mexico.

(Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz;)

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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Residents of the Cite Soleil neighborhood in Haiti’s capital protested Tuesday, demanding government protection after gang violence forced hundreds of people to flee their homes over the weekend.

Roselaine Jean-Pierre, 67, was among two dozen people who gathered at an intersection in Cite Soleil holding tree branches and demanding that police intervene in the area, even as gunshots were ringing nearby.

“I did not do anything to deserve this,” said Jean-Pierre, who fled her home on Sunday, and is now sleeping in the streets of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

Some of the protesters said they saw people getting killed over the weekend in Cite Soleil, where burned cars and dead cows could also be observed. Haitian authorities have not released any information on casualties.

“I know of seven people that have been killed and also people that have been shot,” said Michel-Ange Toussaint, who had returned briefly to her home in Cite Soleil to gather some clothes.

She said the attacks on civilians began Sunday around 6 p.m., prompting many people to flee the area in search of safety. “It is our good feet that saved us,” Toussaint said.

Gangs have overtaken Port-au-Prince since the assassination of President Jovenal Moïse in July 2021 at his home. Police say they control about 70% of the capital — down from 90% — and have expanded their activities — including looting, kidnapping, sexual assaults and rape — into the countryside. Haiti has not had a president since the assassination.

In a statement released Monday, the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders announced the evacuation of its hospital in Cite Soleil following the intense clashes Sunday.

The Centre Hospitalier de Fontaine, another hospital that operates in Cite Soleil, said on Tuesday that it had also suspended operations due to the outbreak of violence that began Sunday, and had to evacuate all of its hospitalized patients, including 11 newborns.

In April, the first foreign troops linked to a U.N. force arrived in Haiti to help quell ongoing violence.

The U.N. Security Council in late September approved a plan to authorize a 5,550-member force, which has not fully arrived in the island nation. An unknown number of troops from Chad have so far been deployed.

A report published earlier this year by the International Organization for Migration found that gang violence has displaced more than 1.4 million people in Haiti, with approximately 200,000 of them now living in crowded and underfunded sites in the nation’s capital.

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Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

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