Haiti ‘will go hungry soon’, it has been warned, as looting sparks a food shortage in the Caribbean country where out-gunned police are battling rampaging gangs.
Despite Haiti’s government on Thursday extending a state of emergency and nighttime curfew by a month to try and curb the violent gang attacks, US government officials fear that law and order could collapse within hours.
Meanwhile, Haiti’s main port was forced to close – days after thousands of inmates were broken out of two prisons, swelling ranks of gangs already enforcing their control of much of the nation – including the capital city.
Port-au-Prince has been paralyzed in a fierce battle for political power, with Jimmy ‘Barbecue’ Cherizier – an influential gang leader in Haiti – having warned of civil war and ‘genocide’ unless embattled Prime Minister Ariel Henry resigns.
Henry traveled to Kenya last week to negotiate an UN-backed multinational police mission to stabilize his country. However, as he attempted to fly back to Port-au-Prince on Tuesday, he was prevented from landing by gang attacks on the airport.
He landed in the US territory of Puerto Rico instead, where he is believed to remain. The attacks began a week ago, shortly after Henry agreed to hold general elections in mid-2025 while attending a meeting of Caribbean leaders in Guyana.
Gangs have burned police stations, shot up the main international airport, which remains closed, and raided Haiti’s two biggest prisons, freeing more than 4,000 inmates.
An initial three-day curfew was announced over the weekend. But Despite the crackdown, gangs have continued to attack police stations and other state institutions at night with Haiti’s National Police struggling to contain the violence with limited staff and resources.
In many cases, the gangs are better armed than the police. ‘The people with the guns are essentially the current arbiter of Haitian politics,’ said Robert Fatton, a Haitian politics expert at the University of Virginia.
‘The gangs have won the battle so far.’ Dozens of people have died in Haiti’s recent gang attacks, including several police officers. The violence also has left more than 15,000 people homeless, in addition to some 300,000 Haitians who lost their homes to gang wars in recent years.
In addition, there were reports that gangs on Thursday looted shipping containers filled with food at the main port in Port-au-Prince, raising concerns that provisions in the capital and elsewhere would dwindle quickly.
‘If we cannot access those containers, Haiti will go hungry soon,’ said Laurent Uwumuremyi, Haiti director for Mercy Corps.
