Gang violence in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, has left 30 residents dead and more than a dozen injured, a local human rights group said on Thursday.
Houses in the city’s Carrefour-Feuilles neighborhood were set on fire in the attacks and two police officers also died, a provisional toll provided by the National Human Rights Defense Network showed.
The neighborhood is a strategic area for the gangs, which control about 80 percent of the city.
Photo: Reuters
One resident, Dominique Charles, told reporters that she had lost her mother, stepfather, 18-year-old son, two sisters and a brother.
“The assailants attacked our house with Molotov cocktails. I was able to escape, but the other family members were not so lucky,” she said.
In the past few days, violence in the neighborhood has caused about 5,000 residents to flee, authorities said.
While some of the displaced have found shelter in schools or a local sports center, others have been stuck in the streets.
Authorities on Thursday said they had started distributing meals and water to the survivors.
Meanwhile, aid groups backed by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) are temporarily shutting down operations, including some mobile health clinics, amid the violence.
“In a matter of days, violence escalated dramatically in Port-au-Prince, particularly affecting neighborhoods where the IRC collaborates with local organizations to provide vital services,” the group said.
The IRC launched its Haiti response plan in December last year and works with local groups across the capital.
Ann Lee, cofounder of US-based crisis response group CORE, which is still operating in Haiti, said that many aid groups had left as costs rise, financial aid dwindles and staff operate under increasingly life-threatening conditions.
“We have a staff member who lost her daughter because she was having a seizure and couldn’t get to the hospital,” she said. “We have an employee whose brother was beheaded.”
Additional reporting by Reuters
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
RSS