Two men in Haiti were hacked to death by a mob who thought they were buying ammunition or guns for gangs that have terrorized the country, police said on Saturday.
Police said the crowd snatched the men from police custody after they were found with about US$20,000 and the equivalent of about US$43,000 in Haitian cash in their car, along with two pistols and a box of ammunition.
Carrying that amount of cash was considered suspicious, and residents assumed it was a weapons purchase for gangs.
Photo: Reuters
The killings happened on Friday in a town near the provincial city of Mirebalais. Police appeared to fire warning shots into the air to try to prevent the killings, but the mob killed them anyway.
One of the victims was a police officer, and the other was a former guard, according to their identification documents.
The killings underscored how outnumbered police are in Haiti, and the anger of Haitians after months of killings, kidnappings and armed attacks by the country’s gangs.
In the past month, gangs have been targeting key infrastructure across the capital, Port-au-Prince, including police stations, the main international airport that remains closed and Haiti’s two biggest prisons, releasing more than 4,000 inmates.
On Thursday, William O’Neill, the UN rights expert for Haiti, said the conflict-wracked Caribbean nation now needs between 4,000 and 5,000 international police to help tackle the “catastrophic” gang violence.
Canada has sent about 70 soldiers to Jamaica to train troops from Caribbean nations who are due to take part in a UN-authorized mission to Haiti, the Canadian Department of National Defence said on Saturday.
Kenya announced last year it would lead the force, which is designed to help national police fight powerful gangs in Haiti where spiraling violence has fueled a humanitarian disaster.
The initiative has been tied up in Kenyan court challenges ever since, effectively putting the mission on hold.
The Canadian troops, from the predominantly French-speaking province of Quebec, are to provide training on core peace-keeping skills and combat first aid, the defense ministry said in a statement. French is one of Haiti’s two official languages.
The troops are due to stay in Jamaica for an initial period of a month and are to train about 330 troops from Jamaica, Belize and the Bahamas.
Canada last month said that it would give C$80.5 million (US$59.6 million) to support the deployment of the Kenyan-led mission.
Additional reporting by Reuters
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
A powerful magnitude 7.6 earthquake shook Japan’s northeast region late on Monday, prompting tsunami warnings and orders for residents to evacuate. A tsunami as high as three metres (10 feet) could hit Japan’s northeastern coast after an earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 7.6 occurred offshore at 11:15 p.m. (1415 GMT), the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said. Tsunami warnings were issued for the prefectures of Hokkaido, Aomori and Iwate, and a tsunami of 40cm had been observed at Aomori’s Mutsu Ogawara and Hokkaido’s Urakawa ports before midnight, JMA said. The epicentre of the quake was 80 km (50 miles) off the coast of
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
A passerby could hear the cacophony from miles away in the Argentine capital, the unmistakable sound of 2,397 dogs barking — and breaking the unofficial world record for the largest-ever gathering of golden retrievers. Excitement pulsed through Bosques de Palermo, a sprawling park in Buenos Aires, as golden retriever-owners from all over Argentina transformed the park’s grassy expanse into a sea of bright yellow fur. Dog owners of all ages, their clothes covered in dog hair and stained with slobber, plopped down on picnic blankets with their beloved goldens to take in the surreal sight of so many other, exceptionally similar-looking ones.
RSS