Gangs kill 2 elite police officers in latest attack

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP):

Heavily armed gang members killed two Haitian police officers in the latest deadly attack on law enforcement in the troubled Caribbean country, officials said Wednesday.

The officers attacked late Tuesday were members of a new specialised unit tasked with patrolling Kenscoff, a once peaceful farming community that gangs are trying to seize. It is located near the capital, Port-au-Prince, of which 90 per cent is already controlled by gangs.

Lionel Lazarre, deputy spokesperson for Haiti’s National Police, told The Associated Press that the policemen were inside an armored vehicle that became stuck in a ditch dug by gangs and were killed as they tried to escape.

In a video posted on social media, gang members gloated over boots, automatic weapons, bulletproof vests and other items they seized from police during the attack. They also posted gruesome videos of the officers killed.

The killings come less than a month after three other police officers and an informant were killed in Haiti’s central region, which gangs have repeatedly attacked. A fourth officer also remains missing in that case.

Some 1,520 people were reported killed and another 600 injured across Haiti from April to the end of June, with 24 per cent of them injured or killed by gangs, according to the latest UN report.

Haitian police are working with Kenyan officers leading a UN-backed mission that is struggling to quell gang violence. The multinational force was supposed to be on the ground with more than 2,500 uniformed personnel but has less than 1,000, said Ulrika Richardson, the outgoing UN humanitarian coordinator for Haiti.

Speaking at UN headquarters in New York on Tuesday, she described the situation on the ground as “alarming and urgent,” calling it “very strikingly horrific” in Port-au-Prince, where she lived and worked.

Richardson said 1.3 million people have been displaced by gang violence, two million people are facing emergency levels of food insecurity, and two out of three hospitals in the capital are not functioning.

She also noted that there’s a lack of political will at many different levels and a lack of money. As an example, she said, the US$900 million humanitarian response plan for Haiti, which is only nine per cent funded, is “the lowest level of funding for any response plan in the world.”

Richardson warned that Haiti’s gangs have now plunged into regional organised crime including trafficking in drugs, arms and people.