PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti
Soldiers have been deployed to defend the airport of the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, from an assault by armed gangs.
Witnesses reported hearing
shots ringing out in the vicinity of Toussaint Louverture Airport as security
forces clashed with armed men.
The gangs' aim is to prevent
the return to Haiti of Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who is believed to be
abroad.
Violence has spiralled in his
absence with the gangs demanding he resign.
Mr Henry left Haiti last week
to attend a regional summit in Guyana. From there, he travelled to Kenya to
sign a deal on the deployment of a multinational police force to Haiti.
His current whereabouts are
not known but a spokesman for the US state department said: "It's our
understanding that the prime minister is returning to the country
[Haiti]".
While he was in Kenya, a
coalition of gangs led by a former police officer, Jimmy "Barbecue"
Chérizier, went on the offensive, attacking police stations and storming two of
Haiti's biggest prisons.
About a dozen people were
killed in the attack on the prisons. Thousands of inmates escaped and remain on
the loose.
A minister standing in for Mr
Henry declared a 72-hour state of emergency.
Haitian newspaper Le
Nouvelliste reports that both international and national commercial flights
have been suspended for the past days due to the violence. Le Nouvelliste added
that no private planes had landed or taken off from the airport either.
An attempt by gunmen to breach
the airport compound through a hole in a wall was reportedly repelled by
security forces.
Control of the airport is key
to the gangs' aim of stopping Prime Minister Henry from coming back to the
country.
The gang leader known as
Barbecue has been calling for his ouster since the prime minister was sworn in
as the successor to President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021.
Already rampant gang violence
was further fuelled by the murder of President Moïse by Colombian mercenaries,
which left a power vacuum in the country.
Armed gangs, wielding weapons
smuggled in from the US, have gained control of an estimated 80% of the capital
in recent years.
Prime Minister Henry has asked
the international community to send troops to help fight the gangs. But a plan
for Kenya to send 1,000 police officers to help contain the violence has
stalled after the Kenyan High Court blocked it.
Mr Henry was in Nairobi for
talks with Kenyan President William Ruto to try to salvage the deployment, when
the latest violence flared.
In a video posted on social
media, Barbecue declared last week that "the first objective of our fight
is to ensure that Ariel Henry's government does not remain in power".
On Saturday, his gang attacked
several police stations before freeing thousands of prisoners from the National
Penitentiary and from the Croix des Bouquets jail.
Only about 100 prisoners
remained in their cells at the National Penitentiary, prison officials said.
Among those who stayed put
were 17 Colombian ex-soldiers suspected of having carried out the assassination
of President Moïse.
In a video, they pleaded for
help, saying that other inmates were trying to get them to leave their cells
and were going to use them "as cannon fodder".
The Colombian foreign ministry
later announced that the 17 had been transferred to a different prison.
Thousands of Haitians have had
to flee their homes in recent weeks and are sheltering in schools and other
public buildings
Residents of the capital
mainly stayed at home on Monday with only a few people venturing out to get
drinking water or food, the AFP news agency reported.
Speaking from Haiti, Serge
Dalexis from the International Rescue Committee said it had become extremely
difficult for people to access basic services such as health care, food and
water.
"There's a lack of
everything now in Port-au-Prince," Mr Dalexis said, adding that shooting
was being reported in many areas of the city.
An estimated 15,000 people
have been displaced from their homes over recent weeks due to the violence.
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