United Nations, May 14 : UN humanitarians have reported an alarming escalation of armed violence since Sunday in a neighbourhood in Haiti's Port-au-Prince metropolitan area.

The violence in Cite Soleil has forced more than 5,300 people to flee their homes. More than half of them have sought shelter in 12 sites, while many others are being hosted by already overstretched communities, said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on Wednesday (local time), citing figures from the International Organization for Migration.

"The scale of violence has had immediate consequences for people's access to life-saving healthcare," said OCHA, adding that Doctors Without Borders on Monday was forced to evacuate and suspend its operations in Cite Soleil Hospital, after treating more than 40 gunshot patients in under 12 hours and sheltering over 800 people.

The same areas had already experienced armed violence in March and April, resulting in the displacement of close to 8,000 people and increased pressure on essential services, said OCHA.

Despite the insecurity, humanitarian organisations have not suspended all activities in Cite Soleil. Partners are conducting assessments in the areas where displaced people have relocated within Cite Soleil. OCHA is bringing humanitarian partners together to prepare a collective humanitarian response in a rapidly evolving and volatile security environment, said the office.

Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for the UN secretary-general, warned on Wednesday that once violence flares up, the situation might become difficult, reports Xinhua news agency.

"Certainly, a lot of the problem in recent days, as we've been talking about, has involved the activity of different gangs, and also the activity of different security forces dealing with the gangs," said Haq.

"We're hoping that we, through our efforts, can get the parties to step back from this violence. But, unfortunately, as you know from the history of Haiti in recent years, it's extremely hard once these activities have begun. And so we are worried about how the armed violence has escalated in various neighbourhoods in the capital," he told a daily press briefing.

"It's very clear, when we're talking about more than 40 patients who had gunshot wounds in a 12-hour span, that there's a lot of activity. So it would be reasonable to believe that there have been some fatalities, but we don't have those numbers," he said.

/IANS