Police, residents kill dozens of Haitian gang members after attack in Pétion-Ville

More than two dozen gang members were killed by police and members of the public after residents of the Pétion-Ville neighborhood woke up in panic on Tuesday to gunmen among them.

The attempted attack on the residential suburb of Port-au-Prince, which was trying to protect itself from the capital’s murderous gangs, triggered a reaction from residents not seen since April of the last year when residents of the Canapé-Vert neighborhood of Port-au-Prince hunted down and burned suspected gang members who were trying to invade their community.

At least 28 suspected gang members were killed, police spokesman Lionel Lazarre told the Miami Herald, as residents sheltered in place and all of Pétion-Ville remained on lockdown.

“For the moment, the police continue to carry out operations,” he said.

Lazarre said he doesn’t yet know where the gang members, who have been threatening to invade the community for days, came from. They were intercepted in the Canapé-Vert, Lalue and Bourdon districts while they were on their way. Police and members of the Kenyan-led multinational security mission had been on heightened alert for several days amid constant threats and shootings around Port-au-Prince.

At least 10 gang members were killed by police and “by locals who took justice into their own hands” after a truck the gang members were traveling in crashed into a police checkpoint near the he Oasis Hotel on Panamerican Avenue, he said. “There was an exchange of gunfire and the gang members fled,” Lazarre said.

Corpses, cut up with machetes and set on fire, littered the road. In the Bourdon Valley, not far from the residence of the American ambassador to Haiti and the prime minister’s office, other charred bodies littered the road. In Ruelle Rivière, where a famous clinic was burned, residents also lynched several suspected gang members in what is known in Haiti as “Bwa Kale,” the name given to the movement of citizen self-defense brigades.

In all besieged areas, residents blocked roads with vehicles and joined police in establishing checkpoints to keep gang members out.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said through his spokesperson on Tuesday that he “is alarmed by the escalation of violence.”

As gangs gain ground in the capital, Guterres “reiterates his urgent call for the (multinational security support) mission to receive the financial and logistical support it needs to successfully implement its mandate,” he said. declared spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric in a press release. “It also highlights the importance of urgent progress in the political transition. »

Lazarre said events began unfolding around 2 a.m. when police intercepted the truck and a minibus heading toward the neighborhood up the hill. The two vehicles were carrying members of armed groups who, after days of fighting against the police and members of the multinational police mission in the Solino and Nazon neighborhoods of the capital, had openly declared war and declared that Pétion-Ville and neighboring Delmas would be next.

In addition to the gang members who were on board the truck, other members of the armed gang, he said, were killed after the minibus stopped in the Post-Marchand district of the capital.

Hundreds of cartridges were seized from the gangs, as well as a drone and at least two AK47 automatic rifles, Lazarre said, adding that police were continuing their operations in the Bourdon district of the capital, “where many are hiding of these types.” .”

The attempt by armed gangs to attack Pétion-Ville, home to luxury hotels and some of the country’s richest people, came amid heightened tensions in Haiti.

On Tuesday afternoon, gang leader Jimmy Chérizier, nicknamed “Barbecue” and spokesperson for the “Viv Ansanm” gang coalition, targeted hotels in the capital, saying those hosting politicians would pay.

“A hotel that hides politicians, if we can’t take the hotel, if I can’t find the hotel owner, then the hotel employees can pay,” he said in a video shared on social networks.

In separate video clips, Chérizier also targeted the ruling Presidential Transitional Council, demanding its resignation.

“What do we expect from the CPT? We await his total resignation,” he said, referring to the council by its French acronym. “We are not in the CPT… In this battle, Viv Ansanm will use all her strength and everyone who stands in front of Viv Ansanm will be in trouble.”

The coalition, he declared, “will use all its means to obtain the departure” of the council.

The gang leader’s demands and targeting of Pétion-Ville come after the failure of a recent operation to capture one of the leaders of the gang coalition and a wave of attacks in the metropolis of Port-au- Prince. Banks have come under fire, private homes near the US embassy in Tabarre have been set on fire, and fear of being killed is fueling gasoline and diesel shortages as truckers fear being shot , refuse to deliver supplies.

“This is Ukraine, this is the front line,” a prominent businessman said to explain the new level of fear gripping the capital. “People are afraid to leave their homes because they might get shot. »

On Monday, gang members disrupted a ceremony commemorating the 221st anniversary of the Battle of Vertières in Tabarre. The ceremony, which commemorates the last battle fought by Haiti against the French before gaining its independence, took place in the presence of the president of the council Leslie Voltaire and the new prime minister, Alix Didier Fils Aimé, who, with new members of the government, inaugurated a new military base. in the region.

Last week, the nine-member Presidential Transitional Council that runs Haiti ousted Prime Minister Garry Conille and named Fils-Aimé, an entrepreneur, as head of government..

During his inauguration ceremony, Fils-Aimé declared that restoring security and organizing elections were his main priorities. However, both tasks pose a daunting challenge as armed gangs become emboldened and more neighborhoods fall under their control despite the presence of the Kenyan-led international armed police mission, with operatives from the Bahamas, Jamaica and Belize.

Last week, after three U.S. airline planes were hit by gang fire while landing in or leaving Port-au-Prince, the airport authority closed the capital’s international and domestic airports and the Federal Aviation Administration issued a ban on all flights for 30 days. American flights to Haiti. The FAA’s decision also temporarily affected UN humanitarian flights as well as the rental of a helicopter that Taiwan is funding for the Haitian National Police to transport officers to hot zones.

The attacks were accompanied by a surge in violence in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area that last week led to the displacement of an additional 20,000 people, including more than 10,000 children, the United Nations said . They join the more than 700,000 Haitians who have already had to flee their homes.

“Children in Haiti are once again bearing the brunt of the relentless violence by armed groups that has upended their lives, casting a dark cloud over their future,” Geeta Narayan, country director of UNICEF, the main agency, said Monday. of the United Nations for Child Protection. “Children not only experience the trauma of violence in neighborhoods like Solino and Tabarre, but also face the compounded impacts of malnutrition, cholera outbreaks, severe psychological distress and, too often, tragic losses in human lives. »

On Wednesday, the UN Security Council will discuss the situation in Haiti at a meeting convened by Russia and China. The two countries, which have veto power in the Council, remain opposed to a US attempt to transform the multinational security mission into a formal UN peacekeeping operation. Such a move would ensure funding for under-resourced security efforts and also increase the number of foreign police and military personnel on the ground in Haiti to help fight gangs.