AP

Gangs strangle Haiti’s capital as deaths, kidnappings soar

May 21, 2022, 7:05 PM | Updated: May 22, 2022, 1:58 pm

Children rest in a school converted into a shelter after they were forced to leave their homes due ...

Children rest in a school converted into a shelter after they were forced to leave their homes due to clashes between armed gangs, in the Tabarre neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Thursday, April 28, 2022. Gang violence has forced dozens of schools and businesses to close in recent weeks and displaced thousands of families, with many of them seeking temporary shelter in schools and shelters as aid groups note an urgent need for food and items including blankets and mattresses. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)

(AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)


              Children rest in a school converted into a shelter after they were forced to leave their homes due to clashes between armed gangs, in the Tabarre neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Thursday, April 28, 2022. Gang violence has forced dozens of schools and businesses to close in recent weeks and displaced thousands of families, with many of them seeking temporary shelter in schools and shelters as aid groups note an urgent need for food and items including blankets and mattresses. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)
            
              A boy displaced from his Croix-des-Missions home to avoid clashes between armed gangs, takes refuge in a school converted into a shelter in the Tabarre neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Thursday, April 28, 2022. The ongoing violence and kidnappings have prompted hundreds of Haitians to flee their country, often a deadly move. Dozens of have died at sea in recent months. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)
            
              A woman braids a girl's hair at a school converted into a shelter after they were forced to leave their homes due to clashes between armed gangs, in the Tabarre neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Thursday, May 12, 2022. UNICEF's representative in Haiti said that one growing concern is the lack of access to basic things like water, food and medicine as people remain trapped in certain areas while gangs continue to fight, noting that malnutrition is on the rise. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)
            
              Children rest in a school converted into a shelter after they were forced to leave their homes due to clashes between armed gangs, in the Tabarre neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Thursday, April 28, 2022. Gang violence has forced dozens of schools and businesses to close in recent weeks and displaced thousands of families, with many of them seeking temporary shelter in schools and shelters as aid groups note an urgent need for food and items including blankets and mattresses. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)
            
              Children take refuge in a converted shelter after being forced to leave their homes due to clashes between armed gangs, in the Tabarre neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Thursday, April 28, 2022. About 1,700 schools have shuttered amid the spike in gang violence, leaving more than half a million children without an education said the United Nations. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)
            
              A police officer patrols a street during an anti-gang operation in Croix-des-Missions, north of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Thursday, April 28, 2022. Haiti's understaffed and under-resourced police department is roughly made up of 11,000 officers for a country of more than 11 million people. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)
            
              FILE - Haiti's new Police Chief Frantz Elbe speaks during a press conference in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Nov. 9, 2021. Elbe said on May 9 that dozens of gang members have been arrested and dozens killed in clashes with police since he took over the department in October. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix, File)
            
              Demonstrators march demanding peace and security in La Plaine neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Friday, May 6, 2022. Escalating gang violence has prompted Haitians to organize protests to demand safer neighborhoods. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)
            
              Men salvage parts from a charred car that was set on fire during clashes between armed gangs in the Butte Boyer neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Friday, May 13, 2022. Dozens of people, including women and children, have been killed in recent weeks amid new clashes between gangs fighting over territory as their power grows following the July 7 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)
            
              A woman walks past a barricade set up by gang members in Croix-des-Missions, north of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Thursday, April 28, 2022. Gangs have forced schools, businesses and hospitals to close as they raid new neighborhoods, seize control of the main roads connecting the capital to the rest of the country and kidnap victims daily. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)
            
              Residents watch as an armored police car is transported on the bed of a trailer, to be used in an anti-gang operation in Croix-des-Missions, north of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Thursday, April 28, 2022. Prime Minister Ariel Henry has remained largely quiet amid the escalating gang violence, while Haiti's new police chief pledged in a May 9 news conference to, "continue to track down the criminals." (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)
            
              A man walks past charred and abandoned vehicles in La Plaine neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Friday, May 6, 2022. Fighting raged in four districts on the northern side of Port-au-Prince that has surged as increasingly powerful gangs try to control more territory during the political power vacuum left by the July 7 assassination of President Jovenel Moise. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)
            
              Jean Claude Celestin recalls how his car was set on fire during clashes between armed gangs in the Butte Boyer neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Friday, May 13, 2022. Gangs are fighting each other and seizing territory in the capital of Port-au-Prince with a new intensity and brutality in a country that many feel is swiftly unraveling as it tries to recover from the July 7 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)
            
              A charred jawbone is seen in the debris of home set on fire during clashes between armed gangs in the Butte Boyer neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Friday, May 13, 2022. The United Nations said that civilians are being burned alive and that children as young as 10 are being gang raped. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)
            
              A man shows journalists how his home was set on fire during clashes between armed gangs in the Butte Boyer neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Friday, May 13, 2022. As police try to contain the gang violence, AP journalists visited the Butte Boyer neighborhood, where the smell of charred homes and decaying bodies spread for several blocks. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)
            
              Residents travel on a motorbike as they flee their home to avoid clashes between armed gangs, in the Croix-des-Mission neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Thursday, April 28, 2022. Experts say the scale and duration of gang clashes, the power they are wielding and the amount of territory they control has reached levels not seen before. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — It was about 6 a.m. when Venique Moïse flung open the door of her house and saw dozens of people running — their children in one hand and scant belongings in the other — as gunfire intensified.

Minutes later, she joined the crowd with her own three kids and fled as fires burned nearby, collapsing homes. Over the coming hours and days, the bodies of nearly 200 men, women and children — shot, burned or mutilated with machetes by warring gangs — were found in that part of Haiti’s capital.

“That Sunday, when the war started, I felt that I was going to die,” Moïse said.

Gangs are fighting each other and seizing territory in the capital of Port-au-Prince with a new intensity and brutality. The violence has horrified many who feel the country is swiftly unraveling as it tries to recover from the July 7 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse and the United Nations prepares to debate the future of its longtime presence in Haiti.

Experts say the scale and duration of gang clashes, the power criminals wield and the amount of territory they control has reached levels not seen before.

Gangs have forced schools, businesses and hospitals to close as they raid new neighborhoods, seize control of the main roads connecting the capital to the rest of the country and kidnap victims daily, including eight Turkish citizens still held captive, authorities say.

Gangs also are recruiting more children than before, arming them with heavy weapons and forming temporary alliances with other gangs in attempts to take over more territory for economic and political gain ahead of the country’s general elections, said Jaime Vigil Recinos, the United Nations’ police commissioner in Haiti.

“It’s astonishing,” he told The Associated Press, noting that gang clashes are becoming protracted, ruthless affairs. “We are talking about something that Haiti hasn’t experienced before.”

At least 92 civilians and 96 suspected gang members were killed between April 24 and May 16, with another 113 injured, 12 missing and 49 kidnapped for ransom, according to the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The office warned that the actual number of people killed “may be much higher.”

Gangs also gang-raped children as young as 10 and set fire to at least a dozen homes, forcing some 9,000 people to flee and seek temporary shelter in churches, public parks and shuttered schools, U.N. officials said.

Haiti’s National Human Rights Defense Network said some victims were decapitated while others were thrown into wells and latrines. Gangs posted pictures of the gruesome scenes on social media to further terrorize people. The network said that most women and girls were raped before being killed.

“Armed violence has reached unimaginable and intolerable levels in Haiti,” Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a May 17 statement.

Bruno Maes, UNICEF’s representative in Haiti, told the AP that one growing concern is the lack of access to basic things like water, food and medicine because people remain trapped in certain areas while gangs continue to fight, noting that malnutrition is on the rise, affecting 1 in 5 children in the Cité Soleil neighborhood alone.

“We are really seeing a strangulation of Port-au-Prince,” he said, adding that UNICEF has been forced to use a helicopter and now a boat to try to reach those most in need.

Staff at hospitals and clinics report they’re being stretched thin, with Doctors Without Borders noting that it treated nearly 100 people for gunshot wounds from April 24 to May 7, forcing the aid group to reopen a clinic in Cité Soleil it had closed in early April because of the violence.

Prime Minister Ariel Henry has remained largely quiet amid the escalating gang violence, while Frantz Elbé, Haiti’s new police chief, said dozens of gang members have been arrested and another 94 killed in clashes with police since he took over the department six months ago. Nearly 5,000 suspects have been accused of crimes including murder and kidnapping, Elbé said.

“I am going to continue to track down the criminals,” he pledged in a May 9 news conference, adding that Haiti’s understaffed and under-resourced police department of roughly 11,000 officers for a country of more than 11 million people was receiving training and equipment from the international community.

At least 48 killings were reported in the neighborhood of Butte Boyer, which Edna Noël Marie fled with her husband and three children when gunfire erupted in late April.

The 44-year-old is sleeping on the concrete floor of a crowded shelter with no mattresses in increasingly unhygienic conditions while her children stay at a friend’s home.

“It’s not big enough to shelter all of us,” she explained, adding that she fears gangs will recruit her two sons and rape her daughter. “These people have no remorse, and society doesn’t really care. … There is no civil protection. There are no authorities. Police are here today, and they’re going to be gone tomorrow.”

About 1,700 schools have shuttered amid the spike in gang violence, leaving more than half a million children without an education, with the directors of some schools unable to keep paying gangs to ensure students’ safety, the U.N. said. Efforts are underway to set up an FM radio station dedicated to broadcasting classes, Maes said.

“It’s very saddening for us that children who are willing to learn and teachers willing to teach cannot do so because they feel unsafe,” he said.

The ongoing violence and kidnappings have prompted hundreds of Haitians to flee their country, often a deadly move. At least 11 Haitians died and 36 others were rescued when their human smuggling boat overturned near Puerto Rico this month. Dozens of others have died at sea in recent months.

Another concern is the lack of housing not only for the estimated 9,000 families recently forced to flee their homes, but also for the estimated 20,000 others displaced last year who are still living in overcrowded, dirty government shelters. At the same time, the country is struggling to help roughly 20,000 Haitians the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden has deported in recent months amid sharp criticism.

As police try to contain the gang violence, AP journalists visited the Butte Boyer neighborhood, where the smell of charred homes and decaying bodies spread for several blocks. Dogs gnawed on victims’ remains.

Several walls and gates were scrawled with “400 Mawozo,” a testament to the presence of a gang believed to have kidnapped the Turkish citizens in early May and 17 members of a U.S.-based missionary group last year, demanding $1 million in ransom and holding most for two months.

Nailed to a wooden post, a picture of a man killed during the recent gang violence flapped in the wind. The sign underneath read, “Thanks to the government of my country.”

It was once a quiet neighborhood that Lucitha Gason, 48, knows she won’t return to again. She was getting ready for church when the explosion of gunfire in late April forced her to abandon her home. She’s been staying at a shuttered school, but the owner recently demanded that she and dozens of other Haitians find another place to sleep.

Gason is now trying to figure out where to go since she can’t afford to leave the country.

“We can’t count on the government. We can’t count on organizations. They’re all making promises that aren’t coming through,” she said. “Here in Haiti, you really have to depend on yourself and what you can do for yourself. There’s no such thing as what the country can do for you.”

___

Coto reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Copyright © The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Gangs strangle Haiti’s capital as deaths, kidnappings soar