Haitian Prime Minister Garry Conille embarked on a trip to the United Arab Emirates and Kenya on Saturday to seek security assistance.
This comes in the aftermath of one of the deadliest gang
attacks in the Caribbean nation in recent years.
In Kenya, officials said Cornille will meet President
William Ruto to discuss how Kenya will fast-track the deployment of more police
officers there to help combat the gangs.
"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.
Kenya plans to send 600 more police officers to Haiti from
this month to January. The officers have completed their training ahead of the
planned deployment.
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".
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 October 3, 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.
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.
"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 in helping
Haiti restore order with only about 400 mostly Kenyan police officers on the
ground.
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.
The Haitian government has deployed specialist anti-gang
police units, it said Friday, after the apparent massacre northwest of
Port-au-Prince that the United Nations said left at least 70 dead.
The attack, carried out early Thursday in the town of Pont
Sonde, some 100 kilometres (60 miles) from the capital, also saw scores of
houses and vehicles torched after gang members opened fire.
That is the deadliest single attack to happen since the
Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission aimed at restoring peace in Haiti
was deployed in June 2024.
The Haitian Prime Minister's office said in a statement that
"this latest act of violence, targeting innocent civilians, is
unacceptable and demands an urgent, rigorous and coordinated response from the
state."
At least 16 people were seriously injured, the UN said,
including two gang members shot by the police.
Gang members reportedly set fire to at least 45 houses and
34 vehicles, it added, forcing an unknown number of residents to flee.
Additional security forces, supported by the Kenyan-led
international policing mission deployed to the country, were sent to Pont Sonde
overnight Thursday into Friday, the prime minister's office added.
Last week, the UN human rights office said more than 3,600
people had been killed already this year in "senseless" gang violence
in the country.
Haiti has for years been beset by compounding political,
humanitarian and gang crises, with armed groups rising up to push out
then-prime minister Ariel Henry earlier this year in an effort that saw attacks
on the international airport and police stations.
Many politicians are intertwined with armed groups.
Last week, the US Treasury announced sanctions against a
member of parliament from the Artibonite Department, where Pont Sonde is
located, for allegedly helping form the Gran Grif gang to aid in his 2016
election.
That government is mandated to restore security and lead the
country to its first polls since 2016.
(MSS) mission aimed at restoring peace in Haiti is facing
setbacks due to a lack of adequate financial support for member states who made
a pledge to the United Nations.
In his tour of Port-au-Prince on September, 21, President
William Ruto to the Kenya-led MSS mission being converted to a full U.N.
peacekeeping operation.
"On the suggestion to transit this into a fully U.N.
Peacekeeping mission, we have absolutely no problem with it, if that is the
direction the U.N. security council wants to take," Ruto said.
The UN-authorised mission that is led by Kenya faces a
funding inadequacy as member states who committed to contribute $ 84 million
(Sh10.8 billion) have so far contributed $67 million (Sh8.6 billion).
