Port-au-Prince | Haitian police admitted on Saturday having lost four agents and equipment in a poor neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, during an operation against gangs that looked like a fiasco for the country’s authorities.
“In this operation, we lost four policemen. Eight others are injured: five have already left the hospital, the other three are in stable condition, ”said Léon Charles, the director general of the Haitian National Police (PNH).
In his brief statement, the police official expressed his sympathy to the families of the victims as well as to “all the population which supports the efforts of the police and which is stunned by the publicity made with the bodies of the police officers who died”.
Mr. Charles was referring in particular to a video, filmed and broadcast on social networks Friday, showing the lifeless bodies of two police officers from specialized units dragged to the ground and beaten by unidentified individuals.
The police did not recover the bodies of these police officers killed in the poor district of Village de Dieu, at the hands of the gangs, where bursts of automatic weapons resounded Friday. Léon Charles did not specify whether the police made a single arrest.
On other images synonymous with humiliation for the police, we see several damaged vehicles of the Haitian police, including an armored vehicle, abandoned in this district located by the sea, in the heart of the Haitian capital.
“We have equipment that has remained in the theater of operations,” admitted Léon Charles without providing details.
The United Nations office in Haiti said in a statement released on Saturday that it was “imperative that the circumstances surrounding the tragic events of March 12 be clarified, and that the perpetrators of this killing be arrested, prosecuted, and brought to justice. Justice”.
Large caliber automatic weapons and Haitian police security equipment were also reportedly recovered by the criminals.
The grip of gangs on Haitian territory has increased considerably in recent years.
These criminal networks have full control over several poor and densely populated areas of the capital, lawless areas that they use as places of detention for those they kidnap.
Since the fall, Haiti has witnessed an upsurge in kidnappings for ransom that indiscriminately affect the richest inhabitants, and the majority living below the poverty line.