02-03-25, 22:20
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Haiti Police Raid Gang Leaders Stronghold in Capital
Haiti Police Raid Gang Leaders Stronghold in Capital....
Haiti: How Can Kenyan Forces Stabilize a Country Plagued by Gang Violence?
BBC 2 MAR 2025
The government of Haiti says police have launched a large scale operation in a shantytown controlled by powerful gang leader Jimmy Ch?rizier, who is widely known as Barbecue.
The authorities say several gang members have been killed in the Lower Delmas area of the capital Port-au-Prince.
Local reports say military drones carrying explosives are being used in the operation.
Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aim? praised the assault. He said it was the work of a special task force created two days ago to tackle insecurity.
Jimmy 'Barbecue' Ch?rizier has become one of the most powerful gang leaders in Haiti
Ch?rizier, aged 47, is the feared leader of Viv Ansam a coalition of gangs that control much of the city.
It is not clear whether Kenyan police officers deployed in Haiti last year to help fight the gangs are involved in the security operation.
Last week, a Kenyan police officer who was on patrol with the Kenyan-led Multinational Security Support mission was killed in a confrontation with gang members.
Gang control in Port au Prince has led to an almost complete breakdown of law and order, the collapse of health services and emergence of a food security crisis.
More than 5,500 people were killed in gang related violence in the Caribbean nation in 2024 and more than a million people have fled their homes.
Haitis transitional presidential council, the body created to re-establish democratic order, has made little progress towards organising long-delayed elections.
On Patrol With Kenyan Forces Inside Haitis Gang Warzone
Two-year-old Shaina is hooked up to an intravenous drip at one of the few functioning hospitals in Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince. Her mother, Venda, desperately hopes it will alleviate the acute malnutrition the emaciated young girl is suffering from.
Shaina is one of 760,000 children who are on the brink of famine in Haiti.
Terrified of the gang warfare raging in her neighbourhood, for weeks Venda was too frightened to leave her home to seek treatment for her daughter.
Now that she has made it to the paediatric ward, she hopes it is not too late for Shaina.
I want to get proper care for my child, I dont want to lose her, she says tearfully.
Haiti has been engulfed in a wave of gang violence since the assassination in 2021 of the then-president, Jovenel Mo?se, and now an estimated 85% of the capital is under gang control.
Even inside the hospital, Haitians are not safe from the fighting, which the UN says has killed 5,000 people this year alone and left the country on the verge of collapse.
The hospitals medical director explains that the previous day, police clashed with gang members in the emergency ward among terrified patients.
The victims of the violence are everywhere. One ward is full of young men with gunshot wounds.
Pierre is one of them.
A man lies on a narrow hospital bed looking at an x-ray, other patients are lying in beds next to him.
He says he was walking home from work when he was caught in the crossfire of one street battle, with a bullet ripping through his collar bone.
I think if the government were more stable and had put in place better youth programmes, they would not get involved in the gangs, he says of the young men who make up a large proportion of the groups terrorising the capital.
To combat the growing violence, the UN Security Council authorised the establishment of a Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS) in October 2023.
Funded primarily by the US, the Kenyan-led force deployed to Haiti six months ago tasked with restoring law and order.
On a patrol in downtown Port-au-Prince, the ferocity of the gang violence is clear.
Kenyan officers drive along the streets in heavily armoured personnel carriers (APC) through once bustling areas of the capital that now lie deserted. Shops and houses are boarded up.
Burnt out cars and debris are piled high along the side streets - barricades built by the gangs to block access.
Godfrey Otunge is the commander of the Kenyan-led multi-national force in Haiti
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaXkZvXQSWc
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