The humanitarian group accused authorities in the lawless Haitian capital of repeatedly stopping its vehicles and threatening its staff with violence, including death and rape.

Gang violence surged in Haiti, with a paroxysm of bloodshed leaving at least 150 dead and driving the charity Doctors Without Borders to suspend its operations in the country. Haiti has been racked by armed groups who operate with impunity, unrestrained by a government that controls little of the nation’s actual territory.

Doctors Without Borders has suspended its activities in Port-au-Prince following a series of threats by Haiti’s police forces, the organization announced Tuesday. Death and rape are among the threats that Doctors Without Borders — or Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) — staff have received from police officers,

MSF said police diverted one ambulance to a hospital, where “law enforcement officers and members of a self-defence group surrounded the ambulance, slashed the tyres, and tear-gassed MSF staff inside the vehicle to force them out”.

The NGO said its staff had been threatened with rape and death by Haitian police, forcing it to shut down some of the few functioning healthcare centers in the capital.

Doctors Without Borders said on Tuesday that it is stopping operations across the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, and its wider metropolitan area because of an escalation in violence and threats to its staff from members of the Haitian police.

We can no longer continue operating in environment where our staff is at risk of being attacked, raped, or even killed,' says MSF's Haiti representative - Anadolu Ajansı