At least 12 people were killed when gangs pushing for the prime minister's ouster attacked two prisons.
At least 12 people have died as thousands of inmates escaped from Port-au-Prince's main prison in an escalation of gang violence designed to remove Prime Minister Ariel Henry from power.
Gangs led by Jimmy Cherizier, a former police officer known as Barbecue, attacked the jail in the country's capital overnight Saturday.
Pierre Esperance of the National Network for the Defense of Human Rights said only about 100 of the estimated 3,800 inmates at the National Penitentiary remained inside after the assault.
“We counted the bodies of many prisoners,” he added.
A journalist from the AFP news agency who visited the prison on Sunday said he saw about a dozen bodies outside. The door was open and “almost no one” was inside, they added.
The Reuters news agency reported that there was no sign of police officers at the prison and that the main door was open.
“I'm the only one left in my cell,” an unidentified inmate told Reuters. “We were asleep when we heard the sound of bullets. “Cellular barriers are broken.”
In a statement, the Haitian government said police attempted to repel the gang attack on that prison and another facility called Croix des Bouquets. Esperance said it was not immediately clear how many inmates escaped from the second prison, which he said had 1,450 inmates.
The government said the attacks left “several injuries” among prison staff and inmates.
In a statement he thanked “the population for their peace of mind, despite these difficult times.”
Violence in Haiti has spiked in recent days after Cherizier's calls for criminal groups to unite and overthrow Henry. Cherizier heads a gang alliance and faces sanctions from the United Nations and the United States.
A volunteer prison worker said Sunday that 99 inmates had chosen to remain in their cells at the main jail for fear of dying in the crossfire. Among them were several retired Colombian soldiers who were imprisoned for their alleged involvement in the assassination of former President Jovenel Moise.
The authorities warned the population to be careful and “continue to support the National Police who will do everything possible to locate the fleeing prisoners and arrest those responsible for these acts,” the statement reads.
The prime minister's exact whereabouts remained unclear on Sunday. Henry was due to return from a visit to Kenya, where he signed a security agreement to address gang violence.
Nearly 15,000 people have been forced to leave their homes in recent days and 10 sites housing internally displaced people were emptied over the weekend, according to the United Nations' International Organization for Migration (IOM).
Henry, who became prime minister in 2021 after Moise's assassination, was supposed to resign in early February, but told a regional summit in Guyana before traveling to Kenya that he would only hold elections in August 2025, once the situation was more stable.
The last elections took place in 2016.
