HUNGER in Haiti is soaring as humanitarian aid supplies run low, the United Nations said today

Gangs in the Caribbean nation continue to suffocate the country.

Aid groups say that around 1.4 million Haitians are on the verge of famine, and more than four million require food aid, sometimes eating only once a day or nothing at all.

World Food Programme Haiti director Jean-Martin Bauer warned: “Haiti is facing a protracted and mass hunger.”

He said that Croix-des-Bouquets, in the east of the capital Port-au-Prince, “has malnutrition rates comparable with any war zone in the world.”

Officials are trying to rush food, water and medical supplies to makeshift shelters and other places as gang violence suffocates lives across the city and beyond, with many trapped in their homes.

Only a few aid organisations have been able to restart work since February 29, when gangs began attacking key institutions, burning police stations, shutting down the main international airport with gunfire and storming two prisons, releasing more than 4,000 inmates.

The violence forced unelected Prime Minister Ariel Henry to pledge last Tuesday that he would resign once a transitional council has been established, but gangs demanding his removal have continued their attacks on several communities.

Mr Bauer and other officials said that the gangs were blocking distribution routes and paralysing the main port and that the UN agency’s warehouse was running out of grain, beans and vegetable oil as it continued to deliver meals.

He said: “We have supplies for weeks. I’m saying weeks, not months. That has me terrified.”

Street vendor Marie Lourdes Geneus, a mother of seven children, said that gangs had hased her family out of three different homes before they ended up at the shelter.

“It's a horrible life I’m living. I made a lot of effort in life and look where I end up, trying to survive.”

More than 200 gangs are believed to operate in Haiti, including nearly two dozen in Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas. They now control some 80 per cent of the capital.

Food for the Hungry’s Haiti director Boby Sander said: “We’re stuck, with no cash and no capacity to move out what we have in our warehouse. It’s catastrophic.”

Mr Bauer said the humanitarian appeal for Haiti this year was less than 3 per cent funded, but $95 million (around £75m) is urgently needed in the next six months.

“Conflict and hunger in Haiti are moving hand in hand,” he said. “I’m frightened about where we’re going.”