Hitmen apologize to victims after shooting the wrong car

Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, became the scene of a battlefield this Friday night, with heavy shootings that intensified near the National Palace, according to local media reports.

The roars of bullets spread over a wide area of ​​the city center, spanning from Champ de Mars to Nazon, Lalue, Canape-Vert and Turgeau.

Confusion reigned in the area for several hours, while it is feared that armed gangs are aiming to assault the National Palace, headquarters of the Government.

The capital’s airport also suffered damage from the gunshots, as seen in some images that circulated on social networks that show large holes in its walls.

Guy Philippe, who helped lead a coup in Haiti in 2004 and returned to the Caribbean island last year after serving a prison sentence in the United States, demanded the resignation of the country’s prime minister and said he wanted to become president.

In 2004, Philippe was one of the main leaders of the overthrow of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. In 2006 he failed in his bid to run for president, before winning a seat in the Senate in 2016.

He was deported from the United States to Haiti in November, after serving six years in prison for laundering money from drug trafficking.

Asked if he wanted to be president, Philippe replied: “Yes! I’m going to dedicate myself to politics. “I was a senator, I have been elected by my people, I will go to the elections again.”

The wave of violence broke out this Friday after a day of relative calm in the metropolitan area of ​​Port-au-Prince, where only a few isolated shots had been heard in the afternoon.

Months of violence have brought Haiti’s government to the brink of collapse, with increasingly powerful gangs demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who remains outside the country, apparently unable or unwilling to return.

“I should resign,” Philippe, the 56-year-old former police chief, said in an interview with Reuters via Zoom from Haiti. “I think he should stay where he is now (…) and let the Haitians decide his fate.”

Tension has increased exponentially in the capital after it became known on February 28 that Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry had committed to holding elections before the end of August 2025.

The violence reached its peak last Saturday, when gangs entered the two main prisons in the capital, allowing more than 3,000 prisoners to escape.

Ariel Henry, whose removal from power the armed gangs are pursuing, is in Puerto Rico, after several days with his whereabouts unknown.

The prime minister, the country’s highest authority after the assassination in 2021 of President Jovenel Moise, is now the subject of pressure both internally and abroad to favor a transition that helps stop the acute crisis and extreme violence in the country.

Haiti is awaiting the deployment of a multinational security support mission led by Kenya and approved by the United Nations last October.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday urged Henry to support a political transition in the country, where the health system is on the brink of collapse, children cannot go to school and thousands have been killed, kidnapped or expelled. of their homes.

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