‘It’s a siege, it’s a war’: Haiti’s gangs tighten violent grip in lethal insurrection

People look for salvageable pieces from burned cars at a shop that was set on fire by armed gangs in Port-au-Prince on 25 March. Photograph: Odelyn Joseph/AP

As gang fighters and police battled outside his home near Haiti’s beleaguered capital late last month, Nielsen Daily Fierrier hurled himself to the ground.

“From six in the morning until six in the evening, the gunfire hardly stopped,” said the 25-year-old electrician from Pétion-Ville, a middle-class suburb in the hills south of Port-au-Prince.