Loading player
On Monday the criminal gangs that have been carrying out an armed insurrection against the Haitian government for weeks They have attacked two wealthy communities in the capital Port-au-Prince that had not so far been affected by the violence. The neighborhoods are called Laboule and Thomassin and were attacked in the early hours of the morning on Monday: 12 people were killed.
These new attacks show that the violence in Haiti, which began at the end of February, is not abating and has actually spread, despite the resignation announced by Prime Minister Ariel Henry, requested for over a week by the gangs. Criminal groups now control much of the capital, including many key infrastructures.
A relative of one of the people killed on the street on March 18 in Haiti (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)
The attacks had intensified in the last days of February, when Henry was in Kenya to conclude an international agreement that would have brought to Haiti a force of around a thousand Kenyan police with the task of countering the activities of criminal gangs, which had already been very active previously .
To prevent the arrival of the security mission, the gangs allied with each other and began an unprecedented armed revolt: they attacked the airport, preventing Henry from returning to the country (he is still abroad), attacked the police stations, broke out thousands of people from prisons, and effectively took control of Haiti away from the government. Their main demand was the resignation of Prime Minister Henry, who after a few days of hesitation gave it.
In Port-au-Prince the violence had so far remained concentrated above all in the poorest areas of the city, the flat areas near the port and the airport. The wealthy neighborhoods, where the embassies, the headquarters of international NGOs and the residences of the richest people in the country are located, are located on the surrounding hills, and so far they had been largely spared from armed attacks.
Laboule and Thomassin are two of these neighborhoods: gang members broke into various homes and killed 12 people, it is not yet known for what reason.
Also on Monday, the Haitian electricity company announced that four electrical substations (which are elements of the grid, and are used for energy transmission) in Port-au-Prince and other areas have been rendered completely unusable: as a result, some areas of the city are now without electricity, including a hospital.
Also for these reasons, in Haiti the humanitarian crisis is adding to the political and security crisis: Haiti, which was already the poorest country in Latin America, has effectively found itself isolated for days (the port and the airport are controlled by the criminal gangs), people they struggle more and more to find food e the healthcare system is close to collapse.