By Steven Aristil
SAINT-MARC, Haiti (Reuters) – Haitian Prime Minister Garry Conille embarked on a trip to the United Arab Emirates and Kenya on Saturday to seek security assistance in the aftermath of one of deadliest gang attacks in the Caribbean nation in recent years.
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, 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.
“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 helping Haiti restore order with only about 400 mostly Kenyan police officers on the ground.
“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.”
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.
A spokesperson for Haiti’s national police told Reuters on Friday evening that the director of police in charge of the Artibonite department had been replaced.
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.
