Officers and civilians kill 28 gang members! Bodies burnt on the street
Port-au-Prince (Haiti) -There is simply no end to the escalation of violence in Haiti : In Port-au-Prince, residents and police officers have killed 28 (suspected) gang members. Since Monday, the gang association Viv Ansamn in the capital of the Caribbean island state has been causing a renewed intensification of the bloody conflicts.
As the authorities themselves confirmed, two cars were stopped by gang members on Tuesday night (local time). The police opened fire and killed ten people, as spokesman Lionel Lazarre reported according to AFP.
Other vehicle occupants tried to flee, but were also killed by the officers and by residents who have since formed so-called self-defense groups.
Footage from Petion-Ville, a suburb of Port-au-Prince, shows shocking conditions: The bodies of suspected gang members are still being burned in the streets! Charred limbs and burnt bodies can be seen beneath flaming car tires.
Members of the self-defense groups drag the bodies of those killed across the street on ropes. But the victims of the gangs can also be seen. A woman sits next to the lifeless body of her brother. These are images of horror.
Haiti plagued by brutal gang warfare and "police violence"
Haiti has been considered a failed state for decades and is the only nation in the western hemisphere to be one of the least developed countries in the world. President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in 2021 and the perpetrators were never caught.
The authoritarian President Ariel Henry, who was in temporary office afterwards, did not allow free elections. In 2023, more than 2,000 people died in violent clashes. Haiti has been governed by a transitional council for several months. The Viv Ansamn gang association wants this council to step down. Every means seems to be justified.
Meanwhile, the non-governmental organization Doctors Without Borders reports "violence and threats from the police", which will cause them to suspend their activities in the capital of the country with a population of 11.7 million. In "Haiti and elsewhere, we are used to working in extremely unsafe conditions, but when even the security forces become a direct threat, we have no choice but to suspend our projects," it said.
According to the report, police officers had repeatedly stopped the organization's vehicles and threatened employees - "including death and rape threats".