Armed gangs attacked on Tuesday the police academy in Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital under curfew where armed gangs released thousands of detainees and tried to seize the airport.
The gangs, which control entire sections of the country, including in the capital, have been attacking strategic sites for several days while the contested Prime Minister Ariel Henry is abroad.
The attack on the police academy, located in a district of Port-au-Prince plagued by armed gangs and where more than 800 people are in training, was repelled by police officers deployed as reinforcements, declared Lionel Lazarre, coordinator of the National Union of Haitian Police Officers (Synapoha).
The gangs say they want to overthrow Ariel Henry, in power since the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse and who should have left office at the beginning of February.
Already the day before, the police and the army had repelled an attack launched against Toussaint-Louverture international airport, according to an AFP journalist.
Unrest around the airport has led international airlines to cancel all flights to Port-au-Prince.
15,000 people forced to flee their homes
Several armed people stormed a police station near the airport and set it on fire, according to the same source.
The civil aviation office of the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, announced that it had suspended
“with immediate effect”
all air connections with its neighbor.
The latest violence follows attacks launched over the weekend against two prisons in Port-au-Prince, which resulted in the escape of thousands of inmates and around ten deaths.
In response, the government declared a state of emergency and a three-day nighttime curfew, renewable until Wednesday inclusive.
This new
“escalation”
of violence has forced some 15,000 people to flee their homes in Port-au-Prince, UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said Tuesday in New York, specifying that humanitarians had started to distribute food and other basic necessities at three new IDP sites.
The UN Security Council will meet behind closed doors on Wednesday on the subject, according to the Council's programme.
Maria Isabel Salvador, United Nations representative in Haiti, will provide them with an update on the situation remotely.
After having been paralyzed, the capital nevertheless seemed to resume a semblance of activity on Tuesday, even if certain streets remain barricaded by stones and tree trunks put in place by residents to protect themselves, according to journalists from the AFP.
Lack of security for the return of the Prime Minister
Transport is working again and businesses have reopened.
Long queues stretch out in front of stores, banks and gas stations.
The US State Department announced that the prime minister was on his way home on Monday, but on Tuesday he was still expected in his country.
According to local media Radio Télé Métronome, Ariel Henry was unable to return due to lack of security at the airport.
The head of government went to Nairobi last week to sign an agreement to send Kenyan police officers to Haiti as part of an international mission supported by the UN and the United States.
Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, is facing a deep political, humanitarian and security crisis aggravated by the assassination of Jovenel Moïse, with a political process in total impasse.
According to the UN, more than 8,400 people were victims of gang violence last year, being killed, injured and kidnapped,
“an increase of 122% compared to 2022”
.
“Every day that passes, if not every hour, it is clear that it is the Haitian people who suffer trying to survive in the midst of horrible and inhumane violence
,” commented Stéphane Dujarric, repeating the call of the UN Secretary General to all political actors to move the political process forward to allow elections to be held.