Haiti: residents trapped as armed gangs target key pocket of Port-au-Prince
Gang members have targeted a strategic neighbourhood in Haiti’s capital, in a four-day attack which has left residents trapped in their homes by flaming barricades and automatic gunfire.
Shots echoed throughout Solino on Thursday as thick columns of black smoke rose above the once peaceful neighborhood, as frantic residents called radio stations appealing for help.
“If police don’t come, we are dying today!” said one unidentified caller.
Pierre Esperance, of Human Rights Network RNDDH said that since the weekend, about two dozen deaths had been reported in the neighbourhood.
“Police are absent. The public physical force is not present,” he said. “And the population in [other] areas have blocked the streets in solidarity with Solino.”
Lita Saintil, a 52-year-old street vendor, said that had seen at least six bodies lying in the streets as she fled Solino on Thursday with her teenage nephew.
The homes around hers were torched by gangs, and she said she had been trapped in her house for hours by incessant gunfire.
“It’s very scary now,” she said. “I don’t know where I’m going.”
The identity of the attackers remained unclear. The community, which is home to thousands of people, was once inundated by gangs before a UN peacekeeping mission drove them out in the mid-2000s.
But the assault could mark a turning point for gangs, which are now estimated to control up to 80% of Portau-Prince and are suspected of killing nearly 4,000 people and kidnapping another 3,000 last year, overwhelming police in the country of nearly 12 million people.
If Solino falls, gangs would have easy access to neighbourhoods such as Canapé Vert, which have so far remained peaceful and largely safe.
“Life in Port-au-Prince has become extremely crazy,” Saintil said. “I never thought Port-au-Prince would turn out the way it is now.”
Late on Thursday, Haiti’s national police released a statement saying officers were deployed to Solino “with the aim of tracking down and arresting armed individuals seeking to sow panic among the civilian population”. Police also released a nearly three-minute video showing in part officers on a rooftop in Solino exchanging fire with unidentified gunmen.
Nearby communities began erecting barricades on Thursday using rocks, trucks, tyres and even banana trees to prevent gangs from entering.
One man near a barricade in Canapé Vert said he had been following the protests organized earlier this week by supporters of former rebel leader Guy Philippe, who has pledged a revolution to drive out gangs.
“It’s more misery,” the man, who declined to identify himself, said of Haiti’s crisis. “We are suffering. The country is gangsterized.”
Amid concerns that the violence in Solino could spill over into other neighbourhoods, parents rushed to schools across Port-au-Prince to pick up their children.
“I don’t know if we’re going to be able to make it back home,” said one mother who declined to provide her name out of fear. “There is no public transportation, and tyres are burning everywhere. We don’t know what we’re going to do.”
Haiti is awaiting the deployment of a foreign armed force led by Kenya to help quell gang violence that was approved by the UN security council in October.
A judge in Kenya is expected to issue a ruling on 26 January regarding an order currently blocking the deployment.