Armed groups clash with residents and police after plans for attack on Pétionville area announced on social media
Gangs have launched a fresh attack on Haiti’s capital, targeting an upscale community in Port-au-Prince where people with guns clashed with residents who fought side by side with police.
The attack on Pétionville was led by the Viv Ansanm group, whose leader, former police officer Jimmy Chérizier, had announced the plan in a video posted on social media.
Continue reading...Tens of thousands deported from Caribbean states, as Dominican Republic pledges to return 10,000 people a week
Activists have called on Caribbean governments to halt the mass deportation of Haitians fleeing escalating gang violence that has claimed thousands of lives and displaced hundreds of thousands of people.
In the past month, tens of thousands of people have been deported to Haiti, including 61,000 from the neighbouring Dominican Republic, whose president recently pledged to deport 10,000 migrants a week.
Continue reading...Medical charity says its staff members were violently attacked by police and vigilantes 100 meters from hospital
The medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has said that at least two of its patients were killed after one of its ambulances was stopped and attacked in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince.
MSF said its staff members were violently attacked on Monday after “members of a vigilante group and law enforcement officers” stopped the ambulance, which was transporting three young people with gunshot wounds.
Continue reading...Move by US authorities comes after plane was shot at on Monday, injuring attendant and forcing airport shutdown
The US Federal Aviation Administration has banned civilian flights into Haiti for 30 days after a jetliner was shot at on approach to Port-au-Prince.
Bullets hit the Spirit Airlines plane when it was about to land on Monday, injuring a flight attendant and forcing the airport to shut down.
Continue reading...Spirit Airlines flight heading from Florida to Port-au-Prince diverted to Dominican Republic after flight attendant was grazed by bullet, amid broader violence in Haiti’s capital
Haiti’s international airport shut down on Monday after gangs opened fire at a commercial flight landing in Port-Au-Prince, prompting some airlines to suspend operations as the country swore in a new interim prime minister who promised to restore peace.
The Spirit Airlines flight headed from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to Port-Au-Prince was just hundreds of feet from landing in Haiti’s capital when gangs shot at the plane, striking a flight attendant who suffered minor injuries, according to the airline, the US embassy and flight tracking data.
Continue reading...Entrepreneur Alix Didier Fils-Aimé replaces Garry Conille as country rocked by worsening gang violence
Haiti’s transitional presidential council has appointed the entrepreneur and former senate candidate Alix Didier Fils-Aimé as the new prime minister, according to the official gazette in the country.
The businessman replaces Garry Conille, who was named prime minister in May. The shake-up is the latest blow to political stability amid soaring levels of gang violence.
Continue reading...Sudan, South Sudan, Mali, Palestine and Haiti rated at level of highest concern in latest six-monthly analysis
Acute food insecurity is expected to worsen in war-stricken Sudan and nearly two dozen other countries and territories in the next six months, largely as a result of conflict and violence, an analysis by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization and World Food Programme has found.
The latest edition of the twice-yearly Hunger Hotspots report, published on Thursday, provides early warnings on food crises and situations around the world where food insecurity is likely to worsen, with a focus on the most severe and deteriorating situations of acute hunger.
Continue reading...Hundreds of poor and desperate children targeted in anticipation of long and bloody battle, says Human Rights Watch
Haitian armed gangs are recruiting starving children to swell their ranks ahead of an anticipated long and bloody battle with international security forces, a report from Human Rights Watch (HRW) has found.
Armed groups – which control most of Haiti – are enticing hundreds, if not thousands, of impoverished children to take up arms with offers of food and shelter, the rights groups said.
Continue reading...Half the country’s population now struggling to find food as lawlessness and inflation cause ‘full-blown crisis’, say aid agencies
Half of all Haitians are struggling every day to find food as rampant gang violence and lawlessness are causing “the worst hunger emergency in the western hemisphere”, a report has found.
The UN World Food Programme (WFP) and its partner organisations estimate that 5.4 million Haitians are now regularly finding it hard to get enough to eat, a record for the Caribbean nation and the largest proportion of acutely food insecure people anywhere in the world, WFP said. The figure suggests another 600,000 people have fallen into “crisis” level hunger since the previous peaks recorded earlier this year and in 2023.
Continue reading...Analysis of UN data shows rising toll on children who are being caught in the crossfire, as well as recruited to kidnap, loot and murder, say aid groups
Five children have been killed or injured in Haiti for every week of the first six months of 2024, caught in the crossfire of warring gangs.
At least 131 children have been killed or injured so far this year, according to analysis of UN Data by Save the Children – up 47% on the final six months of 2023 when 89 cases were documented.
Continue reading...Armed gangs control much of Caribbean country’s capital with reports of 40 rape victims a day in areas, UN reports
The UN has called for the deployment of international security forces in Haiti to be accelerated after a report that at least 1,379 people were killed or wounded in gang warfare and 428 people kidnapped in the country between April and June this year.
“Service providers report receiving an average of 40 rape victims a day in some areas of the capital,” warns the new report from the UN’s office in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince.
Continue reading...Boat carrying more than 80 people was headed to Turks and Caicos as gang violence pushes Haitians to leave country
At least 40 people have been killed at sea after a boat carrying Haitian migrants caught fire, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Port-au-Prince said on Friday.
The boat, which was carrying more than 80 people, departed from Fort Saint-Michel in Haiti’s north and was headed for the Turks and Caicos Islands, the IOM said in a statement, citing the Caribbean nation’s migration authority.
Continue reading...Storm is forecast to glance off Barbados on Sunday before heading through Caribbean and toward the Yucatán
Tropical Storm Beryl is forecast to become the first hurricane of the season before skirting the southern tip of Barbados in the south-eastern Caribbean on Sunday.
Beryl currently holds maximum sustained winds of 60mph (95km/h) and is traveling west at 21mph (34km/h), according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Hurricane Center.
Continue reading...First contingent of multinational team lands in operation to end chaos in gang-controlled country
Hundreds of Kenyan police officers have arrived in Haiti as part of a US-backed security intervention aiming to rescue the Caribbean country from a criminal insurrection that toppled the prime minister and brought death and chaos to the streets.
About 400 members of the Kenya-led multinational police operation stepped off a Kenyan Airways plane at Port-au-Prince’s international airport on Tuesday. The US president, Joe Biden, hailed their arrival as the start of “an effort that will bring much-needed relief to Haitians”.
Continue reading...Missouri state representative Ben Baker’s daughter and her husband were reportedly ambushed when leaving a church
The daughter and son-in-law of a US Republican politician are among three Christian missionaries who have been killed by gang members in Haiti as it emerged that the long-awaited deployment of an multinational security force tasked with rescuing the Caribbean country from months of bloodshed had been delayed.
Ben Baker, a Republican state representative from Missouri, announced the news of the couple’s murder on Facebook late on Thursday, writing: “My heart is broken in a thousand pieces. I’ve never felt this kind of pain.”
Continue reading...An advance group of Kenyan officers, part of a larger UN-backed ‘support mission’ to stabilize Haiti, landed in Port-au-Prince
Kenyan special forces police who have spent time battling al-Shabaab fighters in east Africa are expected to arrive in Haiti in the coming days, as the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, warned the Caribbean country was “on the precipice of becoming an all-out failed state”.
A small advance group of Kenyan officers – part of a larger UN-backed “multinational security support mission” designed to stabilize Haiti after months of mayhem – landed in the capital, Port-au-Prince, late on Monday as the city’s airport reopened nearly three months after a gang uprising forced it to close.
Continue reading...Hundreds have fled their homes as violence once again gripped Port-au-Prince after new prime minister sworn in last week
Gunmen have launched a string of fresh attacks in Port-au-Prince, burning homes and exchanging gunfire with police for hours in one of the biggest outbreaks of violence since Haiti’s new prime minister was announced.
The attacks, which forced hundreds to flee their homes, began late on Wednesday in neighborhoods including Solino and Delmas 18, 20 and 24, south-west of the main international airport, which has remained closed for nearly two months.
Continue reading...Little-known former sports minister Fritz Bélizaire appointed as 90,000 flee capital in a month
Haiti’s newly installed transitional council has chosen a little-known former sports minister as the country’s prime minister, as it presses forward in its monumental task of trying to establish a stable new government amid raging violence.
Fritz Bélizaire replaces Michel Patrick Boisvert, the former minister of economy and finance who was the interim prime minister. His appointment appeared to come as a surprise to some members of the council, with some confessing that they did not know him.
Continue reading...‘Transitional council’ takes oath of office after prime minister formally resigns as gang violence continues to rock capital
Haiti’s prime minister, Ariel Henry, has formally resigned and a new provisional government has been sworn in during a secret ceremony at the presidential palace, nearly two months after a criminal insurrection plunged the capital into chaos.
The nine-person “transitional council” was officially established on Thursday during an event at the national palace in Port-au-Prince. As its members took their oaths, Henry, who is in the US having been locked out of Haiti by the gang uprising, announced in a letter that he was stepping down.
Continue reading...Critics condemn ‘reckless and cruel’ expulsions and say deportees likely to be targeted by armed gangs who control much of country
More than 70 Haitians expelled from the United States have been flown back to Haiti on the first deportation flight since heavily armed gangs launched a bloody insurrection which has paralysed the capital and forced the prime minister from office.
The flight, which landed in the port city of Cap-Haïtien early on Thursday, was described as “inhumane” by human rights activists who warned that deportees would likely be targeted by the criminal factions who control most of the country.
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