PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Haitian gangs laid siege to several Port-au-Prince neighborhoods, burning homes and exchanging gunfire with police for hours as hundreds of people fled the violence early Thursday in one of the largest attacks since The appointment of the country’s new prime minister was announced.
The attacks began Wednesday night in neighborhoods such as Solino and Delmas 18, 20 and 24, located southwest of the main international airport, which has been closed for almost two months amid incessant gang violence.
“The gangs started burning everything in sight,” said a man named Néne, who declined to give his last name for fear of reprisals. “I hid in a corner all night.”
The man walked with a friend carrying a dusty red suitcase full of clothes, the only thing they could save. The clothes belonged to Néne’s children, whom he rushed out of Delmas 18 around dawn during a lull in the fighting.
Neighborhoods, once bustling with traffic and pedestrians, seemed like ghost towns shortly after dawn, and a heavy silence fell over the entire area, except for the occasional bleat of a lone goat.
An armored police van patrolled the streets, passing burned vehicles and cinder block walls where someone had written “Viv Babecue,” a reference in Haitian Creole to Jimmy Chérizier, a former elite police officer known as Barbecue.
People whose homes were saved from the attacks in Delmas 18 and other nearby communities carried fans, stoves, mattresses and plastic bags full of clothes as they fled on foot, by motorcycle or in colorful minibuses known as tap-taps. Others walked empty-handed, having lost everything.
“There was shooting left and right,” said Paul Pierre, 47, who was walking with his partner seeking shelter after their house was set on fire. They couldn’t save any of their belongings.
He said nighttime clashes separated children from their parents and husbands from their wives as people fled in terror: “Everyone was trying to save themselves.”
Martineda, a woman who declined to give her last name for fear of reprisals, said she was left homeless after gunmen set her house on fire. She fled with her 4-year-old son, whom she asked to run away when the shooting started Wednesday night.
“I told him, ‘Don’t be afraid. That’s life in Haiti,'” he said, holding a heavy load of goods above his head, including butter, which he hoped to sell to earn some money and find a new home.
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2024-05-04 07:30:40
