Gangs in Haiti launch fresh attacks, days after new prime minister announced

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Gangs in Haiti laid siege to several neighbourhoods in Port-au-Prince, burning homes and exchanging gunfire with police for hours as hundreds fled the violence early Thursday in one of the biggest attacks since Haiti's new prime minister was announced.

The attacks began late Wednesday in neighbourhoods including Solino and Delmas 18, 20 and 24 located southwest of the main international airport, which has remained closed for nearly two months amid relentless gang violence.

“The gangs started burning everything in sight,” said a man called Néne, who declined to give his last name out of fear.

“I was hiding in a corner all night.”

He walked with a friend as they carried a dusty red suitcase between them that was stuffed with clothes — the only thing they could save. The clothes belonged to Néne's children, whom he had rushed out of Delmas 18 around dawn during a pause in the fighting.

The neighbourhoods that once bustled with traffic and pedestrians were like ghost towns shortly after sunrise, with a heavy silence blanketing the area except for the occasional bleating from a lone goat.

An armoured police truck patrolled the streets, rolling past charred vehicles and cinderblock walls where someone had scrawled “Viv Babecue,” a reference in Haitian Creole to one of Haiti's most powerful gang leaders.

People whose homes were spared in the attack in Delmas 18 and other nearby communities clutched fans, stoves, mattresses and plastic bags filled with clothes as they fled by foot, motorcycle or on colourful small buses known as tap-taps. Others were walking empty-handed, having lost everything.

“There were gunshots left and right,” said Paul Pierre, 47, who was walking with his partner in search of shelter after their house was burned down. They couldn't save any of their belongings.

He said the overnight fighting separated children from their parents and husbands from their wives as people fled in terror: “Everyone is just trying to save themselves.”

The attack occurred in an area controlled by Jimmy Chérizier, a former elite police officer known as Barbecue who is leader of a powerful gang federation known as G9 Family and Allies.

He and other gang leaders have been blamed for coordinated attacks that began on February 29 across the capital, Port-au-Prince. Gunmen have burned police stations, opened fire on the main international airport and stormed Haiti's two biggest prisons, releasing more than 4,000 inmates.

The attacks eventually forced Prime Minister Ariel Henry to resign and led to the creation of a transitional presidential council whose majority unexpectedly announced a new prime minister on Tuesday: Fritz Bélizaire, a former sports minister. The move is threatening to fracture the nine-member council, which was sworn in last week.

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