More than 200 police officers to be sent to Haiti have been put on standby to leave anytime after authorities ordered the reopening of the country’s main international and domestic airports in Port-au-Prince.
Toussaint Louverture International Airport and the Guy Malary domestic airport were both closed last month after Spirit Airlines, JetBlue Airways and American Airlines were struck by gang gunfire on November 11.
No passengers were hurt during the incidents, although a flight attendant on board Spirit Airlines Flight 951 out of Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport sustained minor injuries after the aircraft was riddled with bullets as it prepared to land.
The incident forced several aircraft en route to Haiti to be diverted and led Haitian authorities to shut down the capital’s airports for the second time this year because of gang attacks.
It also affected Kenya's plans to send more police officers to Haiti as planned earlier.
It also prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to issue a 30-day prohibition banning U.S. licensed airlines, including cargo carriers, from flying into Port-au-Prince.
Officials said the reopening now allows them to send the officers to supplement those already on the ground.
They could leave anytime
from December 14.
"There are other factors but we are on standby to leave anytime," said an insider.
The country’s escalating violence has left 5,000 dead so far this year, the United Nations said this week, and the situation remains volatile.
On Monday afternoon, a passenger minibus travelling on a national road toward the capital was shot up, killing several people and injuring others.
The Kenyan team to be sent to Haiti had graduated in November in readiness for the mission.
The team includes all
female Special Weapons and Tactics Team (SWAT) who are part of
600 officers drawn from the General Service Unit (GSU), Anti Stock Theft
Unit, and Rapid Deployment Unit.
They have been ready for deployment in the Kenyan-led Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS) aimed at restoring peace and stability in Haiti.
Kenya has already deployed the first batch of about 400 police officers in Haiti.
Officials said they had realized there is a need for female police officers to be deployed in the Caribbean nation in efforts to stabilize it from criminal gangs.
They will help in handling female suspects and other gender-related cases.
The team underwent pre-deployment training ahead of the planned deployment.
They will join other personnel who are already on the ground.
Together with the SWAT team, these are paramilitary units with wide combat training.
At least 10 countries have promised to send a total of about 2,900 troops to participate in the Kenyan-led Multinational Security Support (MSS).
But only about 430 have deployed since the U.N.-authorised mission got underway in June, nearly 400 of them from Kenya.
Kenya police and their Haitian counterparts mounted operations in parts of Port-au-Prince as gang violence escalated at the weekend alone leaving close to 200 people dead.
The team said they
recaptured a second police station in the area at the weekend.
Close to 200 people were killed in brutal weekend violence in Haiti's capital,
the United Nations said on Monday, December 9, with reports that a gang boss
orchestrated the slaughter of voodoo practitioners.
The killings were overseen by a "powerful gang leader" convinced that his son's illness was caused by followers of the religion, according to civil organisation the Committee for Peace and Development (CPD).
UN rights commissioner Volker Turk said over the weekend that "at least
184 people were killed in violence orchestrated by the leader of a powerful
gang in the Haitian capital".
MSS commander Godfrey
Otunge said they had pushed on with the operations and liberated the abandoned
police station in the Artibonite Department.
The situation in
Pont-Sondé, within the larger Artibonite Department, has significantly improved
after the relentless joint operations and round-the-clock patrols conducted by
the MSS and Haiti National Police (HNP) weakening the gang’s hold in the
region.
The first major success came with the recapture and reopening of the Liancourt Police Station, which the gang had previously looted and burned down, he said.
Inspired by this victory,
he said, residents of Savien also called for decisive action to dismantle the
Gran Grif gang, which had long plagued their community.
Haiti has suffered from
decades of instability but the situation escalated in February when armed
groups launched coordinated attacks in the capital Port-au-Prince to overthrow
then-prime minister Ariel Henry.
Gangs now control 80 per cent of the city and despite a Kenyan-led police
support mission, backed by the US and UN, violence has continued to soar.
More than 700,000 people are internally displaced in Haiti, half of them children, according to October figures from the UN's International Organization for Migration.
