A mob in the Haitian capital burnt 13 suspected gang members alive with petrol-soaked tires in broad daylight on the streets of Port-au-Prince.
Unsettling footage from Monday shows the bloodied men being forced to lie down by rifle-wielding police before bystanders piled tyres on top of them, doused them with petrol and set them alight.
One eyewitness said that the lynch mob seized the victims from police after they were detained in Port-au-Prince’s Canapé-Vert neighbourhood and proceeded to beat and stone them before burning their bodies.
Haiti National Police said in a brief statement that officers stopped and searched a minibus for contraband and had confiscated weapons from suspects before they were “unfortunately lynched by members of the population.”
“If the gangs come to invade us, we will defend ourselves, we have our own weapons, we have our machetes, we will take their weapons, we will not run away,” a 15-year-old Haitian resident told AFP.
The United Nations estimates that gangs now control up to 80 percent of Port-au-Prince.
“Gang violence is expanding at an alarming rate in areas previously considered relatively safe in Port-au-Prince and outside the capital. The Haitian people cannot wait. We need to act now", the UN's special envoy María Isabel Salvador said.
Violence in the capital began before dawn, with gang members storming residential areas, looting homes and attacking residents, according to witnesses.
"It was the sound of projectiles that woke us up this morning. It was 3am, the gangs invaded us. There were shots, shots," a resident of the neighbouring district of Turgeau told AFP.
The number of reported killings in Haiti rose by 21 per cent, from 673 in the last quarter of 2022 to 815 between January 1 and March 31 this year.
"The people of Haiti continue to suffer one of the worst human rights crises in decades and a major humanitarian emergency," a United Nations report said.
"The inhabitants feel besieged. They can no longer leave their homes for fear of armed violence and the terror imposed by the gangs," the UN humanitarian coordinator for Haiti said in a separate statement on Sunday.
Witnesses in Canape Vert said the suspects of the burnings were believed to have been members of the Kraze Barye gang, which translates to “Breaking Barriers.”
Authorities say the group is led by Vitel’Homme Innocent, who is accused of helping kidnap 17 U.S. missionaries in October 2021 and also is linked to the assassination of Moïse, the former President of Haiti.
