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Overview:
Armed individuals killed seven people, including two police officers, and forced several others to flee from two police stations in the municipality of Carrefour. These incidents contribute to the rising toll of police officers killed by gangs and the number of police facilities attacked by these armed groups since February 29.
PORT-AU-PRINCE — Armed individuals, identified by locals as members of a gang led by Caïd Christ-Roi “Krisla” Chéry, killed seven people, including two police officers, in Carrefour— a town in the southern part of Port-au-Prince metropolitan area, on Thursday, April 18. They stormed OMEGA, the central police station there and a substation, looted them, forced the on-duty officers to flee and kidnapped two officers who were later released.
The police union, SYNAPOHA, issued an alert for help, reporting the dire situation faced by the officers at the OMEGA station as the gang took control of a significant part of Carrefour.
“The police high command must act to help the police,” the Syndicate posted on X/Twitter during the attack. “The armed individuals kidnapped several police officers, and others, including civilians, need help,” SYNAPOHA added on April 18.
Videos circulating on WhatsApp show severely injured citizens lying in pools of blood. The underlying reasons for this surge in violence remain unclear. Some speculate that this attack is linked to the “Viv Ansanm” gang coalition of Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier, which has been relentlessly targeting police infrastructure.
“It’s like a game where they’re trying to trap the people of Carrefour inside the town,” a resident told The Haitian Times, providing few details and requesting anonymity. “They don’t want us to leave the area,” she added.
“It’s like a game where they’re trying to shut down Carrefour people inside Carrefour. They don’t want us to run and leave them in the zone.”
A Carrefour resident
There has been no official assessment of the equipment taken from the police station by the gangs, who did not set fire to the police infrastructure. The government and police authorities have yet to comment on this attack on the Omega and the Saint-Charles sub-police station. For now, these police facilities have been abandoned by officers seeking to escape the terror of the gangs.
The shooting deaths of these two officers by the gangs, as reported by Haitian media, recall the assassination of four other officers during an attack on the Bon Repos police station by the Canaan gang on February 29. The total number of police officers killed in 2024 has not yet been confirmed.
As for law enforcement facilities, these two police stations in Carrefour are part of a long list of police infrastructure, including detention centers, that have been attacked by gangs, notably members of the new gang coalition “Viv Ansanm” (living together) led by Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier.
Activities were completely paralyzed this Thursday in Carrefour, a commune covering 165.16 km² at the southern entrance to Port-au-Prince. The Haitian capital is already under the control of over 300 gangs, which dominate 80% of its territories.
Since early March, Port-au-Prince has been in chaos. All activities are slowing down, including the regular operation of schools, which has been challenging for over a month. Only the gangs impose their laws, engaging in killings, kidnappings, and the burning and looting of private and public infrastructure, including police stations and substations.
The criminal actions of the gangs have displaced nearly 100,000 people in one month, who have sought refuge in the provinces to escape the gang violence that spares no one.
According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), 62% of displaced people have moved to the four Great South departments (Grande’Anse, Sud, Nippes, and Sud-Est). Before the escalation of gang violence on February 29, Haiti’s southern region had already welcomed more than 116,000 people fleeing Port-au-Prince.
Faced with this prolonged insecurity, several CEOs from the private sector have written to Kenyan President William Ruto, requesting the deployment of the multinational security support (MSS) mission to help the PNH swiftly counter the gangs’ wave of violence.
“The undersigned, members of the Haitian business community, remain extremely concerned by the regrettable delay in the deployment of the MSS, more than six months after the adoption of Resolution 2699,” the letter dated April 15 states. “Haitian security forces do not have adequate human and material resources to undertake the arduous task of immediately restoring security to allow the transitional government to implement its roadmap,” it adds.
