The Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Ad­min­is­tra­tion an­nounced Tues­day that it will pro­hib­it U.S. air­lines from fly­ing to Haiti for 30 days af­ter gangs shot two planes and the Unit­ed Na­tions will tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend flights to Port-au-Prince, lim­it­ing hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid com­ing in­to the coun­try.

Bul­lets hit the Spir­it Air­lines plane when it was about to land Mon­day in the coun­try’s cap­i­tal, in­jur­ing a flight at­ten­dant and forc­ing the air­port to shut down. Pho­tos and videos ob­tained by The As­so­ci­at­ed Press show bul­let holes dot­ting the in­te­ri­or of a plane. On Tues­day, Jet­Blue an­nounced that its plane had al­so been shot while de­part­ing Port-au-Prince on Mon­day.

The shoot­ings were part of a wave of vi­o­lence that erupt­ed as the coun­try plagued by gang vi­o­lence swore in its new prime min­is­ter af­ter a po­lit­i­cal­ly tu­mul­tuous process.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Du­jar­ric said the agency doc­u­ment­ed 20 armed clash­es and more road­blocks af­fect­ing hu­man­i­tar­i­an op­er­a­tion dur­ing the vi­o­lence Mon­day. The Port-au-Prince air­port will re­main closed un­til Nov. 18, and Du­jar­ric said the U.N. will di­vert flights to the coun­try’s sec­ond air­port in the north­ern, more peace­ful, city of Cap Haï­tien.

Slashed ac­cess to the epi­cen­ter of the vi­o­lence, Port-au-Prince, is like­ly to be dev­as­tat­ing as gangs chok­ing the life out of the cap­i­tal have pushed Haiti to the brink of famine. Du­jar­ric warned that cut­ting off flights would mean “lim­it­ing the flow of hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid and hu­man­i­tar­i­an per­son­nel in­to the coun­try.”

Al­ready, a move­ment of 20 trucks filled with food and med­ical sup­plies in the south had been post­poned and an op­er­a­tion pro­vid­ing cash as­sis­tance to a thou­sand peo­ple in the Car­refour area where vi­o­lence broke out had to be can­celed.

“We are do­ing all we can to en­sure the con­tin­u­a­tion of op­er­a­tions amidst this chal­leng­ing en­vi­ron­ment,” he said. “We call for an end to the es­ca­lat­ing vi­o­lence, to al­low for safe, sus­tained and unim­ped­ed hu­man­i­tar­i­an ac­cess.”

On Tues­day, life in much of Haiti’s cap­i­tal was frozen af­ter the wave of vi­o­lence. Heav­i­ly armed po­lice in ar­mored cars out­side the air­port checked trucks used for pub­lic trans­porta­tion pass­ing by.

Schools were closed, as were banks and gov­ern­ment of­fices. Streets, where just a day be­fore gangs and po­lice were locked in a fierce fire­fight, were eeri­ly emp­ty, with few dri­ving by oth­er than a mo­tor­cy­cle with a man who had been shot cling­ing to the back.

The sounds of heavy gun­fire still echoed through the streets in the af­ter­noon — a re­minder that de­spite po­lit­i­cal ma­neu­ver­ing by Haiti’s elites and a strong push by the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to re­store peace, the coun­try’s tox­ic slate of gangs kept its firm hold on much of the Caribbean na­tion.

Nei­ther the for­mer in­ter­im prime min­is­ter, Gar­ry Conille, nor the new­ly in­au­gu­rat­ed Al­ix Di­di­er Fils-Aimé com­ment­ed on the vi­o­lence.

But Luis Abi­nad­er, who as pres­i­dent of the neigh­bor­ing Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic has cracked down on Hait­ian mi­gra­tion, called fir­ing on the air­plane ter­ror­ism.

“This was a ter­ror­ist act; the coun­tries that are fol­low­ing and help­ing Haiti should de­clare these armed gangs as ter­ror­ist groups,” Abi­nad­er said in a news con­fer­ence.

The Unit­ed Na­tions es­ti­mates that gangs con­trol 85% of the cap­i­tal, Port-au-Prince. A U.N.-backed mis­sion led by Kenyan po­lice to quell gang vi­o­lence strug­gles with a lack of fund­ing and per­son­nel, prompt­ing calls for a U.N. peace­keep­ing mis­sion.

The vi­o­lence comes af­ter a tran­si­tion­al coun­cil, tasked with restor­ing de­mo­c­ra­t­ic or­der to Haiti, which hasn’t held elec­tions since 2016, de­cid­ed to fire Conille, who of­ten was at odds with the coun­cil dur­ing his six months in of­fice. The coun­cil rapid­ly swore in busi­ness­man Fils-Aimé as the new in­ter­im prime min­is­ter.

Conille orig­i­nal­ly called the move il­le­gal, but on Tues­day ac­knowl­edged Fils-Aimé’s ap­point­ment in a post on the so­cial me­dia plat­form X.

“(I) wish him suc­cess in ful­fill­ing this mis­sion. At this cru­cial mo­ment, uni­ty and sol­i­dar­i­ty are es­sen­tial for our coun­try. Long live Haiti!” he wrote.

Fils-Aimé promised to work with in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners to re­store peace and hold long await­ed elec­tions, a vow al­so made by his pre­de­ces­sor.

But many Haitians, like 43-year-old Martha Jean-Pierre, have lit­tle taste for the po­lit­i­cal fight­ing, which ex­perts say on­ly gives gangs more free­dom to con­tin­ue ex­pand­ing their con­trol.

Jean-Pierre was among those to brave the streets of Port-au-Prince on Tues­day to sell the plan­tains, car­rots, cab­bage and pota­toes she car­ried in a bas­ket on her head. She had no choice, she said — sell­ing was the on­ly way she could feed her chil­dren.

“What good is a new prime min­is­ter if there’s no se­cu­ri­ty, if I can’t move freely and sell my goods?” she said, nod­ding to her bas­ket of veg­eta­bles. “This is my bank ac­count. This is what my fam­i­ly de­pend on.”

t was a frus­tra­tion that con­cerned in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers that have pushed for a peace­ful res­o­lu­tion in Haiti like the U.N. and the U.S.

On Tues­day, the U.S. State De­part­ment lament­ed that Conille and the coun­cil “were un­able to move for­ward in a con­struc­tive man­ner” and called on Fils-Aimé and the coun­cil to pro­vide a clear ac­tion plan out­lin­ing a joint vi­sion on how to de­crease vi­o­lence and pave the path for elec­tions to be held to “pre­vent fur­ther grid­lock.”

“The acute and im­me­di­ate needs of the Hait­ian peo­ple man­date that the tran­si­tion­al gov­ern­ment pri­or­i­tize gov­er­nance over the com­pet­ing per­son­al in­ter­ests of po­lit­i­cal ac­tors,” it wrote in a state­ment.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP)