PORT-AU-PRINCE, (Reuters) – More than two dozen suspected gang members were killed in Haiti’s capital yesterday after residents joined police to fight off an attempted overnight attack on an affluent hillside suburb of Port-au-Prince, police said.
The suburb of Petion-Ville was closed off yesterday as residents barricaded streets and asked those not from the area to stay home as they mobilized, some with machetes and hammers in hand, to protect the district from another gang invasion.
A Reuters reporter saw at least 25 bodies across the neighbourhoods of Delmas, Canape Vert and Petion-Ville, where residents set suspected criminals’ bodies on fire under burning tires.
National police deputy spokesperson Lionel Lazarre told Reuters some 30 people he described as gang members had been fatally wounded throughout the day.
“The population stood along the Haitian National Police during these moments. They will continue to work hand in hand,” he said.
Lazarre earlier told local radio that police had intercepted armed men traveling in vans, from which they seized weapons such as Kalashnikov rifles.
Local resident Anara, who did not give her last name, told Reuters men and women had been coming in since midnight “armed to the teeth,” and that people did not know who had sent them.
“We gave them a clear answer,” she said. “We’re not going to give up the area, we’re not going to leave.”
Local newspaper Le Nouvelliste reported scenes of “bwa kale” across several parts of the capital, referring to a civilian vigilante movement that began in April last year when residents lynched and set fire to suspected gang members in the absence of police presence.
Haiti’s under-funded national police has shed thousands of members in recent years.
The U.N. has reported at least 149 cases of “bwa kale” between June and September this year.
Rights activists have however warned of innocent people being caught up in the vigilante killings, and the U.N. has reported cases of extreme violence committed against people accused of petty crimes.
Haiti’s government had in 2022 called for international support to help its police fight the powerful gangs, who are accused of mass sexual violence, ransom kidnappings, extortion, child recruitment and blocking off the flow of key supplies.
The U.N. Security Council approved a support mission last October but it has so far deployed just a fraction of the promised personnel. Haitian leaders have pushed for it to be transformed into a peacekeeping mission to secure more funding.
The Security Council is set to meet on Wednesday afternoon to discuss the escalating violence.
Meanwhile, Doctors without Borders, one of Haiti’s main free healthcare providers, said it was halting its services around the capital because of rape and death threats from police.
Thousands have been killed in the gang conflict and more than 700,000 internally displaced, aggravating already dire food insecurity that has seen some 6,000 plunged into famine-level hunger.
