Police in Haiti on Saturday urgently appealed for help night as they struggled to hold back gangs trying to storm the country’s main prison in a major escalation of violence sweeping the troubled Caribbean nation.
Two of the Caribbean country’s main police unions called for assistance to stop inmates, many considered to be high-profile criminals, from fleeing the National Penitentiary in Port-Au-Prince.
It was unclear how many had fled the prison, but the Gazette Haiti said the number was “significant.”
Photo: Reuters
Some detainees were reluctant to leave en masse for fear of being killed in crossfire, sources said.
Police officers assigned to the prison had vacated the premises on Saturday, the local AyiboPost reported.
Heavy gunfire has caused panic in recent days after calls by gang leader Jimmy Cherizier, a former police officer, for criminal groups to unite and overthrow Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry. Cherizier, also known as Barbecue, heads an alliance of gangs and faces sanctions from the UN and the US.
The penitentiary, built to hold 700 prisoners, held 3,687 as of February last year, rights group Reseau National de Defense de Droits Humains said.
A 2017 report by the group warned of serious overcrowding at the prison, which is said to have poor police staffing.
The prison attack followed reports on Friday that armed men had attempted to take control of the capital’s main container port, causing traffic disruptions and gangs threatened to attack more of the city’s police stations.
Cherizier this week warned locals to keep children from going to school to “avoid collateral damages” as violence surged.
Henry, who came to power after the assassination of the country’s last president, Jovenel Moise, in 2021, had previously pledged to step down by early last month.
He later said security must first be re-established to ensure free and fair elections.
‘TERRORIST ATTACK’: The convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri resulted in the ‘martyrdom of five of our armed forces,’ the Presidential Leadership Council said A blast targeting the convoy of a Saudi Arabian-backed armed group killed five in Yemen’s southern city of Aden and injured the commander of the government-allied unit, officials said on Wednesday. “The treacherous terrorist attack targeting the convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri, commander of the Second Giants Brigade, resulted in the martyrdom of five of our armed forces heroes and the injury of three others,” Yemen’s Saudi Arabia-backed Presidential Leadership Council said in a statement published by Yemeni news agency Saba. A security source told reporters that a car bomb on the side of the road in the Ja’awla area in
‘SHOCK TACTIC’: The dismissal of Yang mirrors past cases such as Jang Song-thaek, Kim’s uncle, who was executed after being accused of plotting to overthrow his nephew North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has fired his vice premier, compared him to a goat and railed against “incompetent” officials, state media reported yesterday, in a rare and very public broadside against apparatchiks at the opening of a critical factory. Vice Premier Yang Sung-ho was sacked “on the spot,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said, in a speech in which Kim attacked “irresponsible, rude and incompetent leading officials.” “Please, comrade vice premier, resign by yourself when you can do it on your own before it is too late,” Kim reportedly said. “He is ineligible for an important duty. Put simply, it was
Yemen’s separatist leader has vowed to keep working for an independent state in the country’s south, in his first social media post since he disappeared earlier this month after his group briefly seized swathes of territory. Aidarous al-Zubaidi’s United Arab Emirates (UAE)-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) forces last month captured two Yemeni provinces in an offensive that was rolled back by Saudi strikes and Riyadh’s allied forces on the ground. Al-Zubaidi then disappeared after he failed to board a flight to Riyadh for talks earlier this month, with Saudi Arabia accusing him of fleeing to Abu Dhabi, while supporters insisted he was
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa on Sunday announced a deal with the chief of Kurdish-led forces that includes a ceasefire, after government troops advanced across Kurdish-held areas of the country’s north and east. Syrian Kurdish leader Mazloum Abdi said he had agreed to the deal to avoid a broader war. He made the decision after deadly clashes in the Syrian city of Raqa on Sunday between Kurdish-led forces and local fighters loyal to Damascus, and fighting this month between the Kurds and government forces. The agreement would also see the Kurdish administration and forces integrate into the state after months of stalled negotiations on
RSS