(25 Jun 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Port-au-Prince, Haiti – 25 June 2024
1. Various of plane landing at the Toussaint Louverture International airport
2. Plane parked on the tarmac
3. Various of Kenyan police officers wearing full combat gear disembarking from the plane ++CONTAINS JUMP CUTS++
4. Kenyan police officers lined up behind a wall next to the plane
STORYLINE:
The first U.N.-backed contingent of foreign police arrived in Haiti on Tuesday, nearly two years after the troubled Caribbean country urgently requested help to quell a surge in gang violence.
A couple hundred police officers from Kenya landed in the capital of Port-au-Prince, whose main international airport reopened in late May after gang violence forced it to close for nearly three months.
It wasn’t immediately known what the Kenyans’ first assignment would be, but they will face violent gangs that control 80% of Haiti’s capital and have left more than 580,000 people across the country homeless as they pillage neighbourhoods in their quest to control more territory.
The Kenyans’ arrival marks the fourth major foreign military intervention in Haiti.
While some Haitians welcome their arrival, others view the force with caution, given that the previous intervention — the U.N.’s 2004-2017 peacekeeping mission — was marred by allegations of sexual assault and the introduction of cholera.
The Kenyans’ deployment comes nearly four months after gangs launched coordinated attacks targeting key government infrastructure in Haiti’s capital and beyond.
They seized control of more than two dozen police stations, fired on the main international airport and stormed Haiti’s two biggest prisons, releasing more than 4,000 inmates.
Critics say the coordinated gang attacks that began February 29 could have been prevented if the foreign force had been deployed sooner, but multiple setbacks, including a legal challenge filed in Kenya and political upheaval in Haiti, delayed its arrival.
On Monday night, Haiti’s Prime Minister, Garry Conille, wrote on the social media platform X that he saluted the Kenyan government’s and its people’s determination to support Haiti “in the fight against the insecurity that is corroding society.”
AP video shot by Pierre Luxama
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