Kenya police and their Haitian counterparts mounted operations in parts of Port-au-Prince as gang violence escalated at the weekend alone leaving close to 200 people dead.
The team under the Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS) said they recaptured a second police station in the area at the weekend.
MSS commander Godfrey Otunge said they had pushed on with the operations and liberated the abandoned police station in Artibonite Department.
The situation in Pont-Sondé, within the larger Artibonite Department, has significantly improved after the relentless joint operations and round-the-clock patrols conducted by the MSS and Haiti National Police (HNP) weakening the gang’s hold in the region.
The first major success came with the recapture and reopening of the Liancourt Police Station, which the gang had previously looted and burned down, he said.
Inspired by this victory, he said, residents of Savien also called for decisive action to dismantle the Gran Grif gang, which had long plagued their community.
On Saturday, December 7, 2024, joy and celebration filled the air as locals witnessed MSS and HNP teams advancing stealthily into Savien to reclaim the Petite-Rivière Police Station.
The station had been inoperable for over a year after it was ransacked and burned by the gang.
The operation resulted in a fierce gunfight, leaving many gang members fatally wounded and others fleeing with life-threatening injuries.
Those who escaped are undoubtedly nursing their wounds, he added.
“We commend the people of Pont-Sondé for their unwavering support and trust in the MSS and HNP teams. This collaboration between the population and security forces has proven that unity can overcome the threat of gangs. We assure the community that these operations and patrols will continue until lasting peace is restored throughout Artibonite.”
Haiti has suffered from decades of instability but the situation escalated in February when armed groups launched coordinated attacks in the capital Port-au-Prince to overthrow then-prime minister Ariel Henry.
Gangs now control 80 percent of the city and despite a Kenyan-led police support mission, backed by the US and UN, violence has continued to soar.
More than 700,000 people are internally displaced in Haiti, half of them children, according to October figures from the UN’s International Organization for Migration.
Voodoo was brought to Haiti by African slaves and is a mainstay of the country’s culture. It was banned during French colonial rule and only recognised as an official religion by the government in 2003.
While it incorporates elements of other religious beliefs, including Catholicism, voodoo has been historically attacked by other religions.
Close to 200 people were killed in brutal weekend violence in Haiti’s capital, the United Nations said on Monday December 9, with reports that a gang boss orchestrated the slaughter of voodoo practitioners.
The killings were overseen by a “powerful gang leader” convinced that his son’s illness was caused by followers of the religion, according to civil organisation the Committee for Peace and Development (CPD).
“He decided to cruelly punish all elderly people and voodoo practitioners who, in his imagination, would be capable of sending a bad spell on his son,” a statement from the Haiti-based group said.
“The gang’s soldiers were responsible for identifying victims in their homes to take them to the chief’s stronghold to be executed,” it added.
UN rights commissioner Volker Turk said over the weekend that “at least 184 people were killed in violence orchestrated by the leader of a powerful gang in the Haitian capital”.
“These latest killings bring the death toll just this year in Haiti to a staggering 5,000 people,” he told reporters in Geneva.
Kenya has deployed about 400 officers since June to lead the MSS, which is meant to comprise around 2,500 personnel from about 10 countries, but the force has been hobbled by funding and staffing shortfalls.
Only a handful of officers from the other countries have arrived in Haiti, and a pledge in October by President William Ruto to send another 600 officers the following month did not materialise.
This is due to various challenges including ongoing violence on the ground that has grounded operations at the main airport in Port-au-Prince.
The additional troops are ready to be deployed anytime, officials said.
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