Bodies burned after Haiti police, civilians kill 28 alleged gang members

Members of the Armed Forces of Haiti patrol in Petion-Ville, a suburb of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on November 19, 2024. [AFP]

Police and civilian self-defense groups killed 28 alleged gang members in Port-au-Prince in an overnight operation, authorities said Tuesday, as Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said it was suspending operations in the Haitian capital.

As the government seeks to regain some control of the violent, chaotic city, MSF warned that the forces of law and order have become a "direct threat," even as gang members pressed on with attacks on some districts.

Reminiscent of previous bloody vigilante reprisals against the country's gangs, an AFP photographer saw people burning the bodies of the alleged gang members in the street, with tires piled atop of them and set alight.

Officers stopped a truck they said was carrying gang members in the wealthy suburb of Petion-Ville at about 2:00 am Tuesday, while a bus ferrying gang members was intercepted in the city center, Haitian National Police spokesman Lionel Lazarre told AFP.

Police opened fire, killing 10, and then chased down those who fled with the help of self-defense groups, formed by residents opposed to the gangs and their violent rule over swaths of the country.

Last year, in a gruesome chapter in the city's ongoing struggle against armed groups, a dozen alleged gang members were stoned and burned alive by residents in Port-au-Prince.

Well-armed gangs control some 80 percent of the city, routinely targeting civilians despite a UN-backed, Kenyan-led international force that has been deployed to help the outgunned police.

Last week, Haitian police stopped an MSF ambulance, shooting and killing two patients.

As a result of the "serious threats against its staff by members of the Haitian police force, MSF has been forced to suspend its activities in Port-au-Prince until further notice," read a press release from the NGO.

In "Haiti and elsewhere, we are used to working in conditions of extreme insecurity, but when even the forces of law and order become a direct threat, we have no choice but to suspend our projects," it continued.

The Haitian capital has seen renewed fighting in the last week from Viv Ansanm, an alliance of gangs that in February helped oust then-prime minister Ariel Henry.

Streets were almost deserted on Tuesday after police and residents erected barricades in several neighborhoods, as the United Nations warned gangs were reported to be gaining ground in the city.

Viv Ansanm spokesman Jimmy "Barbecue" Cherisier, a notorious gang leader, has called for the resignation of the transitional government currently leading the country.

"The Viv Ansanm coalition will use all its means to achieve the departure of the CPT," Cherisier said Monday night, using the acronym for the Transitional Presidential Council.
Hours later the coalition launched attacks on several areas of the capital, including Petion-Ville, Bourdon and Canape Vert.

And the council itself -- made up of unelected officials tasked with the difficult mandate of leading the country to its first elections since 2016 -- is facing its own internal disarray.

Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aime was sworn in last week to replace outgoing premier Garry Conille, who was appointed in May but became embroiled in a power struggle with the council.
Meanwhile, violence continues to shake the country.

According to a UN report last month, more than 1,200 people in Haiti were killed from July to September.

Most of the deaths -- 47 percent -- were attributed to gangs, but 45 percent were the result of law enforcement operations, including 106 extrajudicial "executions."

Some eight percent of the deaths have been civilian led, including by self-defense groups, known as the "Bwa Kale" movement.

Victims were presumed gang members but also people "accused of common crimes" including theft.

More than 20,000 people had been displaced across Port-au-Prince in just four days last week, the UN's International Organization for Migration warned over the weekend.

The country lost major links to the rest of the world last week when the United States banned all civilian flights to the country for a month, after three jetliners approaching or departing Port-au-Prince were hit by gunfire.