The hospital on the frontline of unstoppable gang warfare

It was mid-morning in central Port-au-Prince and already two shooting victims had been rushed into the hospital past a mural instructing visitors to leave machetes and rifles outside.

- Tom Phillips and Etienne Côté-Paluck

The two men - a 60-year-old accountant and a 29-year-old electrician - sat in the trauma centre's "shock room" being patched up as the city around them fell apart. Minutes later sirens blared and a third casualty was wheeled in after also taking a bullet - the latest victim of a year of mayhem in Haiti, which the UN says has claimed several thousand lives.

The arrival of a Kenyan-led international policing mission in June prompted a brief lull in the fighting between security forces, self-defence vigilante groups and a coalition of gangs called Viv Ansanm (Living Together) who appear determined to seize control of Haiti's capital.

But in recent weeks-seemingly after gang leaders realised the 400-member security mission was too weak to challenge them - the bloodshed has again accelerated, prompting calls for a larger peacekeeping force.

"What we have today, it will not work," said Pierre Espérance, one of Haiti's leading human rights advocates as he sat in his group's headquarters in Port-au-Prince.