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In mid-January, a gang carried out a series of deadly attacks on the Solino neighbourhood in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. One of our Observers, who lives in this neighbourhood, filmed the devastation after the attacks. His footage shows burned out homes, shops, cars and a school— and even a charred body. He was able to film after a police intervention restored a measure of calm to the zone. However, peace remains precarious.
The first attack on the neighbourhood of Solino, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, took place on Sunday, January 14. Behind it was the Bel Air gang, backed by other gangs. Bel Air is the name of another neighbourhood, located to the west of Solino. For several days, terrified residents cowered at home, listening to the rattle of machine gun fire and watching columns of smoke lift into the sky.
‘People started running in all directions, trying to save themselves’
“Emmanuel” (not his real name) is one of our Observers in Solino.
The fighting began the afternoon of Sunday, January 14. On Monday morning, tension increased. There was a lot of shooting, homes were torched and people started running in all directions, trying to save themselves. Lots of people had to flee. It was really stressful. At first, the police didn’t intervene at all. But then, on Monday, I think, officers living in Solino started trying to prevent the gangs from continuing their assault.
“James” (not his real name) also lives in Solino. He told us more about the police response.
The attack began on Sunday, January 14, in the western part of Solino. On that day, we saw two armored police vehicles parked in the neighborhood. But the gangs weren’t intimidated by their presence. On Wednesday and Thursday, it started to get more tense. The gangs started setting fires everywhere they went.
On Thursday, the police finally intervened in force. They were able to push the gangs back into the neighborhoods that they controlled before the attack on Sunday. Importantly, they liberated Bergeaud Street.
A video started circulating online showing a group of young people running into a church hall and breaking out its windows. The church in question is the Port-au-Prince Church of Christ, which is linked to College Spring Hill, located to the west of Solino. According to “Emmanuel”, the gang made the church their headquarters before launching its attack, and the police then managed to take back control of the building with the help of young people.
“The video shows young people from the neighborhood breaking out the church windows so that the gangs could no longer use the building in their attack. Because once the windows were broken out, then you could see everything happening inside the building from the outside,” he says.
‘I saw a burned body of a person’
On January 19, the day after police intervened in the gang attack, “James” went back out to the streets of Solino to film the damage.
I saw a number of small businesses, homes and cars burned out. I also saw three or four burned down schools. Everything seemed sacked. I also saw injured people and came across six corpses. I saw one charred body— apparently the body of an elderly woman with a disability. Her home had been burned down with her in it. It was hard to film because gangs still control the western part of Solino, including Oriol Street, the Carrefour Péan neighborhood, Sans Fil Road…
Right now, the neighborhood seems practically dead. It’s like the entire neighborhood was emptied out, even if some people are taking advantage of the relative calm to come back to their homes or, in other cases, pack up their belongings and flee. Personally, I stayed in the neighborhood over the past few days— mainly because I don’t have anywhere else to go. There is still shooting coming from the gangs because they are still close, only about a kilometre away from us. [Editor’s note: The Bel Air neighborhood is located about a kilometre from Solino.]”
“Emmanuel” also describes a state of uneasy calm.
Right now, it is quite calm but people don’t feel safe. Since last year, the gang attacks follow a pattern: they attack, they fail but then they come back. So we feel they could come back at any moment.
According to Pierre Espérance, the executive director of the National Network for the Defense of Human Rights – a Haitian NGO – at least 20 people died in the attacks that took place over recent days.
“The victims include people who were killed inside their torched homes and others who were shot and killed by the gangs while they were trying to flee the attacks,” he said.
Our Observers say that the gangs want control of Solino because of its strategic location. The neighborhood is located in between Bel Air and the Delmas commune. The Bel Air gang wants to be able to use the streets of Solino to, among other reasons, facilitate their escape when they kidnap people in Delmas.
An estimated 80% of Port-au-Prince is currently under gang control, according to the United Nations. Faced with this crisis, the UN security council agreed in October 2023 to send a multinational mission to Haiti, led by Kenya, in order to help local police.
In November 2022, our team broadcast a special report called “Haiti: In the grip of the gangs” on the impact of gang violence on residents. You can watch the video below.
This story originally appeared on France24
