Disgruntled police officers demonstrated in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince on Thursday blocking roads and firing guns into the air to protest the gang killings of colleagues. According to local media, dozens of armed officers also attacked the private residence of the Prime Minister of Haiti, Ariel Henry.
Gangs have killed at least 10 police officers in the past week; another is missing and one more has serious gunshot wounds, according to the Haitian National Police. A video obtained by the news agency AP and recognized by police on Thursday, probably filmed by gangs, shows the naked and bloody bodies of six officers lying on the ground, their weapons across their chests. The gang that killed them, known as the Gan Grif, still has the bodies, police said.
The first Minister return this Thursday in Argentinawhere he participated on Tuesday in the Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac), and found that Haitian police officers forced their way into the country’s main airport, where they erected barricades and burned tires, and apparently Henry mightn’t get out of the terminal. “PM is still at the airport, he can’t leave for now,” said a source who asked not to be named.
Police killings are just the latest example of the escalation of violence in the Caribbean nation, which has been plagued by gang warfare and political chaos following the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in 2021. His unelected successor has called on the UN to lead a military intervention, but no country is ready to hit the ground.
The deaths angered members of Fantom 509, an armed group of current and former police officers who have violently demanded better conditions for officers.
Dozens of these men toured the city on Thursday, many of them hooded, wearing police uniforms, bulletproof vests, rifles and automatic weapons. They took buses to block roads and burned tires all over the cityleaving a column of smoke through the streets.
Many called for tougher action once morest gangs and called for an end to the current government of Ariel Henry, which many Haitians view as illegitimate. At one point, the protesters they broke down one of the doors outside Henry’s house.
“If they are killing policemen, I as a citizen, what should I do?” a masked protester yelled into a video camera. AP. “The police are second only to God and we are going to support them.”
According to local media reports, during the attack on Henry’s residence, located in the Delmas 60 sector in Port-au-Prince, there was material damage and loud shots were heard, while several vehicles had their windows broken.
The tension in the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince and its surroundings is at its highest this Thursday, in which constant shooting is being recorded, a few hours following seven police officers were killed by armed groups in Savien, in the Haitian department of Artibonite, raising ten the number of agents killed violently in two weeks.
Faced with the tense situation, some schools sent their students home and the population tends to leave the streets of the capital, where the police presence has been scarce in recent days.
In 2022, at least 55 agents were killed in the country, in a context marked by the deterioration of the security climate and dominated by armed attacks, the multiplication of kidnappings, robberies and rapes.
(With information from AP and EFE)
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