Foreign military aid requested by Haiti’s beleaguered government has arrived in the Caribbean country— including armoured vehicles from Canada, a source with knowledge of the operation confirmed to CBC News — as a security crisis intensifies.
Armed gangs have been blockading Haiti’s main port since last month following a move by Ariel Henry, Haiti’s unelected prime minister, to cut fuel subsidies.
Kidnappings and other crimes are rife; hospitals and banks are often closed as they are unable to access fuel and basic supplies.
As gang violence consumes Haiti, donor nations — Canada included — seem reluctant to get involved
Haiti has been lurching from crisis to crisis for a long time. But at no point in the recent past — perhaps not since the immediate aftermath of the 2010 earthquake — has the country’s plight seemed so hopeless to so many of its people as it does today.
Caribbean leaders, traditionally opposed to outside interventions, are facing an influx of Haitian boat people fleeing what Bahamian PM Philip Davis calls “a failed state.”
The Dominican Republic has deployed its army to the border with Haiti to prevent spillover from what its president Luis Abinader calls a “low-intensity civil war.”
Authorities suspect the missionaries were snatched by the gang, whose thugs have abducted dozens of people already this year, including foreign nationals. In recent months, 400 Mawozo has targeted clergy members and other Christian worshippers.
