Haitian Prime Minister Garry Conille embarked on a trip to the United Arab Emirates and Kenya on Saturday to seek security assistance.
This comes in the aftermath of one of the deadliest gang attacks in the Caribbean nation in recent years.
In Kenya, Cornille will meet President William Ruto to discuss how Kenya will fast track the deployment of more police officers there to help combat the gangs.
Kenya will deploy an additional 600 officers to join the 400 already on the ground in combating the gangs.
“One of the aims of this trip is to go to Kenya to discuss with President Ruto how we can speed up the deployment of remnants of the Kenyan troops as quickly as possible to continue supporting the national police force,” Conille said.
Conille said he would discuss with his counterpart in the United Arab Emirates “how we can find regular flows to help the Haitian national police to combat security.”
Haiti is reeling after members of the Gran Grif gang stormed through the town of Pont-Sonde in the western Artibonite region early on Thursday October 3, killing at least 70 people, including infants, and forcing over 6,000 residents to flee.
The massacre caused widespread shock even in a country that has grown accustomed to outbreaks of violence, and where the national police force is outgunned and understaffed.
On Friday, Conille, flanked by heavily armed police, visited patients at a hospital who were being treated for injuries from Thursday’s attack. He promised reinforcements were en route from the capital, Port-au-Prince.
“As you can see, we are being attacked on several fronts,” Conille said in a press conference before the trip.
Last week, the U.N. Security Council authorized for another year an international security force that is intended to help local police fight gangs and provide law and order.
So far, the mission has made little progress in helping Haiti restore order with only about 400 mostly Kenyan police officers on the ground.
Gran Grif is the largest gang in Haiti’s Artibonite department, according to security analysts. The region is home to many of Haiti’s rice fields.
The gang’s leader Luckson Elan said the attack was in retaliation for civilians remaining passive while police and vigilante groups killed his soldiers.
This week’s killings were the latest sign of a worsening conflict in Haiti, where armed gangs control most of Port-au-Prince and are expanding to nearby regions, fueling hunger and making hundreds of thousands homeless. Promised international support still lags and nearby nations have deported migrants back to the country.
The number of people internally displaced by the conflict has meanwhile surged past 700,000, nearly doubling in six months.
The Haitian government has deployed specialist anti-gang police units, it said Friday, after the apparent massacre northwest of Port-au-Prince that the United Nations said left at least 70 dead.
The attack, carried out early Thursday in the town of Pont Sonde, some 100 kilometres (60 miles) from the capital, also saw scores of houses and vehicles torched after gang members opened fire.
That is the deadliest single attack to happen since Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission aimed at restoring peace in Haiti was deployed in June 2024.
The Haitian Prime Minister’s office said in a statement that “this latest act of violence, targeting innocent civilians, is unacceptable and demands an urgent, rigorous and coordinated response from the state.”
At least 16 people were seriously injured, the UN said, including two gang members shot by the police.
Gang members reportedly set fire to at least 45 houses and 34 vehicles, it added, forcing an unknown number of residents to flee.
Additional security forces, supported by the Kenyan-led international policing mission deployed to the country, were sent to Pont Sonde overnight Thursday into Friday, the prime minister’s office added.
Last week, the UN human rights office said more than 3,600 people had been killed already this year in “senseless” gang violence in the country.
Haiti has for years been beset by compounding political, humanitarian and gang crises, with armed groups rising up to push out then-prime minister Ariel Henry earlier this year in an effort that saw attacks on the international airport and police stations.
Many politicians are intertwined with armed groups.
Last week, the US Treasury announced sanctions against a member of parliament from the Artibonite Department, where Pont Sonde is located, for allegedly helping form the Gran Grif gang to aid in his 2016 election.
That government is mandated to restore security and lead the country to its first polls since 2016.
(MSS) mission aimed at restoring peace in Haiti is facing setbacks due to a lack of adequate financial support for member states who made a pledge to the United Nations.
In his tour of Port-au-Prince on September, 21, President William Ruto to the Kenya-led MSS mission being converted to a full U.N. peacekeeping operation.
“On the suggestion to transit this into a fully U.N. Peacekeeping mission, we have absolutely no problem with it, if that is the direction the U.N. security council wants to take,” Ruto said.
The UN-authorised mission that is led by Kenya faces a funding inadequacy as member states who committed to contribute $ 84 million (Sh10.8 billion) have so far contributed $67 million (Sh8.6 billion).
The said contributions from member states have been made by through the UN Trust Fund for the MSS.
The mission is expected to comprise up to 2,500 police personnel, deployed in phases, at an annual cost of approximately $600 million.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres last month hailed Kenya, Belize and Jamaica for deploying personnel to restore calm in the Caribbean nation.
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