Troops thwart Haiti warlord’s presidential palace raid

SECURITY forces repelled an attempt by gangs led by the warlord Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier to storm Haiti’s presidential palace on Monday.

Passers-by scattered as firefights broke out around Champ de Mars, the main square in the capital, Port-auprince, which the palace overlooks.

Four police officers were injured and an armoured vehicle belonging to palace guards was burnt out. Separately, four people were found dead in the affluent suburb of Pétion-ville, which, until now, had been largely shielded from the bloodshed.

The palace remains empty, after Ariel Henry, the deeply unpopular acting prime minister and president, announced last month that he would resign as soon as a new transitional “presidential council” can be named.

He remains stranded in Puerto Rico after the gangs repeatedly besieged Haiti’s main airport to block his return to the shattered Caribbean nation.

Nevertheless, the palace retains major symbolic significance and the sight of Chérizier – accused of multiple massacres and under US and UN sanctions – occupying it would send a powerful message to both ordinary Haitians and the international community about who now runs the country.

Mr Henry has said the presidential council’s nine members, drawn from civil society, the private sector and the church, have been chosen but he is now haggling with the Caribbean Community, Caricom, over the final details before publicly naming them.

A UN report released last week calculated that just over 1,500 people have died this year in the violence. Around 60 of them were lynched by vigilantes attempting to protect their neighbourhoods from the rampant gangs.