Violence is rooted in the daily lives of residents of the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince. On Wednesday July 27, rival gangs clashed for long hours in the historic center of the city, aggravating the fear of local residents forced to flee the area.
The bursts of gunfire began as soon as the sun rose and it was a real pitched war between gangs in downtown and the Bel Air district.
For months now, the historic heart of the capital has become a lawless zone under the influence of criminal gangs. Gone are the streets teeming with merchants, they are now deserted, strewn with rubbish and overgrown with vegetation.
Fallen in the room of a colleague this Wednesday at rue Brun Ricot (Nazon), in Port-au-Prince. Rain of bullets for several in the city center and lower Delmas… pic.twitter.com/Z1pC9v6tDM
— Valery Daudier (@ValeryDaudier) July 27, 2022
On Wednesday, the few people forced to pass there had to run away to avoid being hit by a stray bullet. Lost bullets that sometimes kill hundreds of meters from the confrontation zones. Children, pregnant women, men completely foreign to the armed conflicts of gangs.
The police intervened against these criminals who clashed within firing range of the presidential palace. The firefighters were also able to put out the start of the fire which partially damaged the temporary cathedral, the historic cathedral destroyed by the 2010 earthquake still not having been rebuilt; which is somewhat symbolic of the city center of the capital, which today seems abandoned by the state and left only to armed gangs.
► To read also: the story of a stray bullet in Haiti