Haitians voice skepticism over interim government

An overnight curfew was extended to Sunday in the Ouest department, which includes Portau-Prince, in an effort to ‘retake control of the situation,’ according to the prime minister’s office.

Haitians were on edge awaiting the naming of a transitional governing body meant to restore stability to the country, wracked by gang violence and largely isolated from the outside world.

Attacks in the capital Port-au-Prince continued overnight, targeting the airport and a top police official’s home, while residents mounted roadblocks in two spots both to impede the criminal gangs and signal their own frustration, an AFP reporter saw.

Some are hoping a transitional council can fill the void left by departing Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who is leaving amid pressure from an offensive by gangs that control 80 percent of the capital.

Yet many have decried the pending establishment of a transitional council, a move supported by Caribbean regional body CARICOM, the United Nations and the United States.

“I’m in the street now and I’m very angry,” resident Francois Nolin told

AFP, claiming that “the Americans are imposing certain conditions on us to run the country.”

“White people have no right to meddle in our affairs. Instead of making things better, they’ll make them worse,” said Jesula, a Haitian woman who declined to give her last name.

The country has a long, brutal history of foreign interventions, from a 20-year American occupation in the early 1900s to a deadly cholera outbreak linked to a UN peacekeeping mission in the 2010s.

Gunfire Thursday near the airport left one police officer wounded. The home of the top police commander was also pillaged and burned, the police union reported.

An overnight curfew was extended to Sunday in the Ouest department, which includes Port- au- Prince, in an effort to “retake control of the situation,” according to the prime minister’s office. A state of emergency is set to end 3 April.