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Meanwhile, cries for help emerged on social media for a group of
priests trapped inside a church in the Carrefour-Feuilles
neighborhood, which endured much of the attack by the Viv Ansanm
gang coalition that began late Tuesday.
“They’re trying to take more areas, but police are there, making
sure that doesn’t happen,” Lionel Lazarre, deputy spokesman for
Haiti’s National Police, told a press conference.
He said police have new plans to fight gangs that already
control 85% of Haiti’s capital, but declined to provide details,
citing safety reasons.
Lazarre noted that police recently seized 10,000 bullets,
weapons and drugs from a minibus in the town of Mirebalais,
northeast of Port-au-Prince. He said two of the four people
carrying the ammunition were lynched by a mob on Sunday, while
the others escaped.
The latest attacks come days after William O’Neill, the U.N.’s
human rights expert on Haiti, visited the troubled Caribbean
country.
“The risk of the capital falling under gang control is
palpable," O’Neill said Tuesday, even as Haitian police work
with a U.N.-backed mission led by Kenyan police to help quell
gang violence.
O’Neill and others have called for a reinforcement of the
mission, which the U.S. has said lacks funding and personnel.
Last year, more than 5,600 people were reported killed across
Haiti. Gang violence has left more than one million homeless in
recent years.
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