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In the Haitian capital on Thursday, demonstrators, angry after the murder the day before of six police officers by gangs, tried to invest the offices of the disputed Prime Minister Ariel Henry and invaded the runway of Toussaint-Louverture International Airport .
Six police officers were killed Wednesday in the north of Haiti during the attack on a police station by gang members, authorities said, a new act of violence at the origin of demonstrations Thursday (January 26th) in Port- to the Prince.
Civilians and police officers, exasperated, marched through the streets of the capital, erected barricades, tried to invest the offices of the disputed Prime Minister Ariel Henry and invaded the runway of Toussaint-Louverture international airport, noted a correspondent from AFP.
The demonstrators, however, failed to reach the diplomatic lounge where the head of government was, returning from a summit abroad. Air traffic was nevertheless disrupted, while schools closed their doors in Port-au-Prince.
“Bandits”
On Wednesday, “bandits” attacked three times a police sub-station in Liancourt, a locality in the north of the Caribbean country, and “during the third attack”, armed men attacking “on all fronts” “have killed six of our officers,” police chief Jean Bruce Myrtil told local radio on Thursday morning..
Among the six police officers killed, four, injured earlier in the day, were “taken out” by gang members from the clinic where they were being treated “in order to execute them”, added the police chief.
>> To see: Haiti: in the hell of the gangs, the France 24 Observers investigation
The Director General of the National Police of Haiti, Frantz Elbé, said that his forces are “on maximum alert (…) from this Thursday, January 26”. The police had announced on their social networks the death of “six brave policemen”.
call for calm
A senior US diplomatic official, Brian Nichols, reacted on Twitter by saying “condemn gang violence”, and called for “calm” in Haiti.
Fourteen police officers have been killed by armed gangs since the beginning of the year, according to a count made by the National Union of Haitian Police Officers. Trade unionist Lionel Lazzare called on officials to adopt measures to protect officers.
>> To read: In Haiti, “the population has very bad memories of foreign interventions”
Gang violence and humanitarian emergency have reached levels “not seen in decades” in Haiti, the UN was alarmed on Tuesday, insisting on the need to send an international force, a request on the table of the Council of security for three months, without result.
With AFP
