Haitian police and residents of Port-au-Prince killed 28 gang members on Tuesday, November 19, after they launched an offensive in several neighborhoods of the capital, a police spokesperson told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Around 2 a.m. (local time, 8 a.m. in Paris), police intercepted a truck and a minibus transporting gang members in Pétionville, an affluent area on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, and in the center of the capital, he said. to the AFP. the deputy spokesperson of the Haitian National Police (PNH), Lionel Lazarre.
During these two encounters, the police opened fire on the gang members, killing ten of them, according to the same source. Forced to flee, the others were chased and then killed by residents organized into self-defense groups and police.
Since last week, Port-au-Prince has been facing a new outbreak of violence caused by Viv Ansanm (“living together”), the gang alliance formed in February that managed to overthrow Prime Minister Ariel Henry.
Political crisis
In the last few hours, this coalition launched an attack against Pétionville and other neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince such as Bourdon and Canapé vert, following an appeal launched on social networks by one of its leaders, Jimmy Chérizier, nicknamed “Barbecue”. “We demand the resignation of the Presidential Transition Council (CPT). “The Viv Ansanm coalition will use all its means to achieve the departure of the CPT”he declared Monday night.
This violence occurs in a context of political crisis, marked by the dismissal, on November 10, by the CPT, of the Prime Minister, Garry Conille, who was replaced by businessman Alix Didier Fils-Aimé.
Haiti, already the poorest country in the region, has long suffered violence from criminal gangs, accused of numerous murders, rapes, looting and kidnappings. In the capital, the streets were almost deserted on Tuesday, after the police and the population set up barricades in several neighborhoods to stop the gang offensive.
Port-au-Prince is also practically isolated from the rest of the world following the decision of the US aviation regulator (FAA) to ban commercial flights by US companies to Haiti. More than 20,000 people were displaced in four days in the Haitian capital, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported this Saturday.
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In total, the wave of violence and a catastrophic humanitarian situation have forced more than 700,000 people, half of them children, to flee their homes to seek refuge in other parts of the country, according to the latest IOM figures.
Around three-quarters of these internally displaced people are now housed in the country’s provinces, with the Greater South region alone hosting 45%, according to the UN agency.
