A prison break in the Haitian city of Saint-Marc on Friday left 12 inmates dead, Mayor Myriam Fievre said, the third such incident in Haiti in the past few months amid a protracted humanitarian crisis fueled by gang violence.
State Prosecutor Venson Francois said the situation on Friday afternoon was under control at the prison, which housed about 540 inmates, but the local population should remain vigilant and watch for escapees.
“The situation is under control, but the results are catastrophic. All the cops’ dormitories have burnt down. The archives have burnt down. They’ve set everything on fire except their cells,” Francois said.
Photo: Reuters
Earlier in the day, unverified videos shared on social media showed people climbing over walls and smoke streaming out of walls ringed with barbed wire, a loud explosion and fire.
Walter Montas, a local government official, said the incident had developed out of a spontaneous protest as prisoners were going without food and facing appalling health conditions.
The national police did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for more information on the incident in Saint-Marc, about 88km north of the capital.
More than 7,500 people were being held in Haitian prisons at the end of June, down from nearly 12,000 before gangs broke thousands out of the two largest prisons in March, UN data showed.
The March prison break triggered a state of emergency that was followed by the resignation of former Haitian prime minister Ariel Henry, who had traveled abroad to secure Kenya’s support in a security mission to battle the armed gangs, and was unable to return due to the fighting.
Just 400 of 1,000 police pledged by Kenya have so far arrived.
With many cells filled to close to quadruple their capacity, the UN said poor conditions and a lack of necessities have resulted in the deaths of at least 109 inmates so far this year.
Local newspaper Le Nouvelliste reported that prison officials had been on strike demanding better government treatment.
It cited Francois saying there was “great fear of mutiny,” without giving more details.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
RSS