The battle for control of Haiti’s volatile capital took another deadly turn on Tuesday as members of a powerful gang coalition that has been using violence to terrorize the population and gain power targeted a densely populated neighborhood in the northeast section of Port-au-Prince.
Members of the Viv Ansanm coalition killed at least 15 people, including a meat vendor who was burned alive in front of his child, residents said. In another instance, an entire family, with the exception of one person who survived by hiding underneath a bed, was slaughtered. A Haitian police spokesman did not respond to a call from the Miami Herald to confirm the deaths.
But at least one corpse made it out of Delmas 30. The dead man, shot by gang members, was being wheeled away in a wheelbarrow down the street by his brother and a friend. The brother said he had called both an ambulance and a morgue for help in transporting the body. Neither would come.
The fresh attacks against Delmas 30, which serves as a shortcut to two other strategically placed working-class neighborhoods in metropolitan Port-au-Prince, started around 1 a.m. Sunday. Since then, residents have been on the run under a hail of bullets as gangs blanketed the slum with automatic gunfire and torched homes.
By Tuesday, hundreds of residents, including those living in a displacement camp, could be seen running down the main Delmas road, balancing on their heads what they could not carry in their hands: mattresses, wooden bed frames, dining room chairs, even a baby’s crib.
Gang members apparently gained access to the slum via a gully that runs parallel to the Auto Route of Delmas, the main thoroughfare.
“I don’t know what plans these guys have for the population,” a frustrated resident, who declined to give his name, said as he turned his anger on those in power, the nine-member ruling Transitional Presidential Council. “A country has nine presidents and they can’t even provide security.”
The attacks, residents said, were carried out by Viv Ansanm, whose name in English translates to Living Together. Led by a former policeman, Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier, and other powerful gang chieftains, the coalition made its public debut a year ago this month by simultaneously attacking key government infrastructures. The coordinated attacks forced the closure of the airport and seaport, and led to the escapes of more than 4,000 prisoners after the country’s two largest prisons were attacked as police stations and hospitals were also set ablaze.
The gang alliance has now aimed its high-powered weapons at the last bastions of the capital not currently under its control and well as communities whose capture would give gang members greater access to those areas. Delmas 30, for example, provides access to Nazon and Solino, two neighborhoods that gangs have been trying to seize in order to gain access to the wealthy district of Pétion-Ville.
“I was living in Delmas 13. Barbecue burned my house and I went to (Delmas 30). Things are still worse,” said the man. “People can’t function.”
The man said at least one police officer was shot in the mayhem, while an entire family was now among the deceased after gang members entered a home with eight people inside, “and only one person survived, by hiding under the bed.”
“They killed everyone inside the house,” the resident said.
As armored tanks drove down the main thoroughfare, scared and teary-eyed residents acknowledged being at a total loss. They had grabbed what they could, but still did not know where they were headed. More than a million Haitians have already been internally displaced by the violence, according to the United Nations.
“Look at how the mothers of children, fathers of children are on the run,” Jean Phillippe Marcel, a displaced resident of Delmas 30, said as his eyes welled up with tears. “They’re throwing live babies into the flames. Oh my God, oh my God, why?”
In addition to the meat vendor, Marcel said a neighbor was also burned alive by gang members, along with her child.
As he spoke, motorcycles were going up and down the road and residents walked by toting their clothing and bed linens on their heads.
The latest wave of violence comes as Haiti National Police and the Kenya-led Multinational Security Support mission find themselves stretched thin on several simultaneous battle fronts.
In adding to the ongoing gang assaults in the mountains above the capital in Kenscoff, where there hasn’t been progress since gangs invaded farming communities late last month, and the Artibonite, where a Kenyan police officer was killed on Sunday, there have been constant raids in the area of the police academy and the hills of Laboule, also near Kenscoff.
In addition to Delmas 30, gangs on Tuesday carried out attacks in Delmas 17, Delmas 19, Tabarre 27 and in Fort National, the neighborhood at the top of a hill overlooking the presidential palace.
With the gunfire so close to the palace, and a police brigade under fire, the palace’s specialized unit deployed to help push back the gangs. Though the palace guards succeeded for the moment, Fort National remained surrounded by gang members on Tuesday amid growing fears that if it were to fall, the neighborhoods of Bel-Air and Poste Marchand would likely be next, and John Brown Avenue could be cut off at Poste Marchand, effectively isolating the rest of downtown from the critical route.
While the attacks were ongoing, the United Nations on Tuesday launched a new humanitarian response plan.
“We and our partners will need $908 million this year to provide aid and protection to 3.9 million vulnerable men, women and children,” Stéphane Dujarric, the spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, announced in New York.
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