An ongoing conflict between heavily armed Haitian gangs on the eastern outskirts of Port-au-Prince has left at least 18 civilians dead and forced several hundred individuals, including children, from their homes, the country’s Office of Civil Protection and the United Nations humanitarian organization said.
Violence between two gangs, 400 Mawozo, which was behind last year’s abduction of 17 Christian missionaries with a U.S.-based charity, and Chen Mechan, a rival group whose name translates to “Mean Dog,” first broke out early Sunday in the predawn hours, and it has continued since then.
Commenting about the overall situation in Haiti on Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a U.S. Senate committee that the country has “a long path forward” and “the criminality, violence, the lack of basic law and order, is a fundamental problem.”
