According to a provisional report, at least eighteen civilians have been killed in recent days in Port-au-Prince, where two gangs are fighting for control of popular neighborhoods located north of the capital, announced Wednesday, April 27 the protection Haitian civilian.
Among these civilians “killed between April 24 and 26”were “a family of eight” as well as “three young women and three children”indicates a report drawn up by the public body and sent to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“Several hundred people” left this zone of clashes, including about fifty who took refuge in a public square “a few hundred meters from the front line”, according to this document. Sleeping in makeshift shelters, they “are exposed to significant security and protection risks, in particular risks of gender-based violence for women, girls and children”alerts the civil protection.
Increased gang grip
“The armed men of the 400 Mawozo gang set my house on fire” and have “killed several of my neighbors before also burning down their houses”testified to AFP Lucien, a resident of the area. “They rape women and girls when they manage to enter a house”, added the man who, for fear of reprisals, preferred not to give his full name. This powerful and feared group of 400 Mawozo had abducted a group of seventeen people made up of North American missionaries and their relatives, including five children, in the fall of 2021.
Long confined to the very disadvantaged areas of the Port-au-Prince seaside, the gangs have greatly increased their hold across the city and the country since the fall of 2020, multiplying murders and villainous kidnappings. The Haitian authorities have not yet commented on the violence, which paralyzes all activity in the north of Port-au-Prince, and the spokesman for the national police, Gary Desrosiers, was unable to provide information. to the press on Wednesday noon.
The area where this violence takes place is highly strategic because it constitutes the only road access to the northern half of the country as well as between the Haitian capital and the Dominican Republic. The authorities have already lost control of the only road access that connects Port-au-Prince to the south since June 2021 because, over the space of two kilometers, the national road is completely under the control of armed bands from the slums of Martissant. In this poor neighborhood, the grip of gangs forced the organization Doctors Without Borders to close the hospital it had been operating for 15 years.