When Haiti orphanage founder and author Mitch Albom heard that U.S. commercial flights into the troubled Caribbean nation were banned for 30 days after gangs shot at three commercial planes and the main international airport was shuttered,

The statement was issued just days after gangs launched a pre-dawn attack Tuesday around an upper-class community in Haiti’s capital, forcing residents armed with machetes and guns to fight side-by-side with police to repel gunmen.

Since January, nearly five thousand civilian deaths have occurred as a result of relentless gang warfare in Port-au-Prince, the country’s capital city, and its immediate environs. The country itself has slid into a catastrophic humanitarian emergency,

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.

Haiti’s airport is temporarily closing as gangs were attempting to take control of it, the US Embassy reported Monday.

United Nations evacuation flights are set to land in Panama City this week as the international organization removes staff from Haiti due to a sharp escalation in violence by armed gangs that have expanded their control over the capital Port-au-Prince.

More than 20,000 people have been displaced across Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince in four days, a UN agency said Saturday, as residents flee gang violence that has crippled the troubled Caribbean nation.