HAVANA, January 27. /TASS/. A few dozens of police officers, protesting against growing violence targeting the police of Haiti, blocked the country’s prime minister in the airport and attacked his residence, the Gazette Haiti news portal reported.
The protests began after six officers were killed by armed gangs in suburbs of the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince.
At first, a group of protestors blocked Prime Minister Ariel Henry in Aeroport International Toussaint Louverture, where he arrived from the summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in Argentina.
According to the report, armed protestors built barricades on roads leading to the airport and refused to let any vehicle pass. The prime minister spent at least six hours in the airport’s diplomatic zone.
After that, protestors set car tires on fire near the prime minister’s residence and threw stones at the building. They also shot at the mansion’s guards, but no deaths or casualties have been reported so far.
In early October 2022 Henry approached the international community with a request for help in countering armed gangs and the humanitarian crisis experienced in the country. The UN Security Council imposed sanctions and an arms embargo targeting extremist groups operating in the country. Later, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres urged the Security Council to consider the issue of deployment of international forces for tackling the humanitarian crisis on the country’s territory, but the upper chamber of the Haitian parliament opposed deployment of international peacekeeping forces.