Rapes, burned houses, and the death of at least 18 civilians: the inhabitants of the northern suburbs of Port-au-Prince have suffered a devastating gang war since Sunday, in a city whose certain districts are already dominated by criminal gangs.
“The armed men of the ‘400 Mawozo’ gang set fire to my house” and “killed several of my neighbors before also burning their houses”, testified to AFP Lucien, a resident of the area.
“They rape women and girls when they manage to enter a house,” adds the man who, for fear of reprisals, prefers not to give his full name.
The violence is such that, since Tuesday, Lucien has had to leave his home to take refuge with “(his) sick mother” in a public square.
In this popular district, at least 18 civilians have been killed since Sunday, according to Haitian civil protection.
Among these victims “killed between April 24 and 26”, was “a family of eight people” as well as “three young women and three children”, indicates the public body.
Like Lucien, several hundred people managed to leave the area of clashes, including around fifty took refuge in a public square “a few hundred meters from the front line”, according to civil protection. But others remain trapped at home.
Among them, a resident, who prefers to remain anonymous, whose little brother received “a stray bullet in the leg on Sunday, while he was at home”.
“We were able to stop the bleeding but we can’t take the risk of taking him to the hospital and we don’t have any medicine to relieve his pain either,” worries the man in his twenties. of years.
Stuck without water or food
While the bursts of automatic weapons have been ringing in their neighborhood for four days, the inhabitants are in dire straits.
“We have no more water or food,” warns a young resident. Her father, who suffers from diabetes and high blood pressure, “is currently in critical condition but we have no way to go and buy medicine and it’s too dangerous to travel with him”, adds- she.
Long confined to the very disadvantaged areas of the Port-au-Prince seaside, armed gangs have greatly increased their hold across the city and the country since the fall of 2020, multiplying murders and villainous kidnappings.
The powerful and feared “400 mawozo” gang abducted a group of 17 people made up of North American missionaries and their relatives, including five children, last fall.
The district where this violence takes place is highly strategic, because it constitutes the only road access to the north of the country as well as between the Haitian capital and the Dominican Republic.
The authorities have already lost control of the only road access that connects Port-au-Prince to the south since June 2021 because, over the space of two kilometers, the national road is completely under the control of armed bands from the slums of Martissant.
In this poor neighborhood, the grip of gangs forced the organization Doctors Without Borders to close the hospital it had been operating for 15 years.
The national police, whose arsenal is far from sufficient to confront over-equipped criminal gangs, has not carried out any operation to regain control of the southern entrance to the capital.
And since Sunday, the police have not yet intervened in the northern suburbs.
For associations too, it is difficult to access this dangerous district.
“We cannot yet go to these areas but the information that has reached us is sad and worrying,” Pierre Espérance, head of a Haitian human rights organization, told AFP.
The authorities have not yet commented on this violence, which paralyzes all activity in the north of Port-au-Prince, and the spokesperson for the national police was unable to provide information to the press on Wednesday noon .