More than 20 people were killed during an attempt by armed individuals to attack an upscale neighborhood in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince.
Deputy spokesperson for Haitis national police Lionel Lazarre said that over 20 people, suspected of belonging to criminal gangs, were killed while the police and residents responded to a nighttime attack attempt on the Petion-Ville, Delmas, and Canape-Vert neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince. Lazarre also mentioned that around 30 other people were injured during the operation.
He noted that police forces intercepted armed individuals traveling in small trucks and seized weapons in their possession, including Kalashnikov rifles.
In a related development, Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said that it was suspending operations in Port-au-Prince due to violence and threats towards its staff from members of the police force. The organization confirmed that, since the attack on one of its ambulances last week, its vehicles have been repeatedly stopped by the police, and some of its staff members have been directly threatened with death.
"We are used to working in conditions of extreme insecurity in Haiti and elsewhere, but when even law enforcement becomes a direct threat, we have no choice but to suspend our projects," MSF's Haiti mission chief Christophe Garnier said.
Over the past years, Haiti's police force has lost thousands of officers due to a lack of funding. In 2022, the country's government called for international support to help its police fight gangs. The UN Security Council later approved the deployment of a support mission in October, but only a small portion of the planned force has arrived so far.
Haitian leaders are seeking to transform the UN mission into a peacekeeping force in order to secure more funding, as thousands of people have been killed in the gang conflict, and more than 700,000 people have been displaced, leading to worsening food insecurity.
