Haitian gang leader killed as security forces intensify operations

SOURCE: Caribbean Me­dia Cor­po­ra­tion

Hait­ian se­cu­ri­ty forces have in­ten­si­fied their of­fen­sive against pow­er­ful armed gangs, killing a no­to­ri­ous gang leader in Port-au-Prince amid a se­ries of co­or­di­nat­ed op­er­a­tions in­volv­ing ex­plo­sive drones.

Prime Min­is­ter Al­ix Di­di­er Fils-Aimé con­firmed the death of Math­ias Sain­til, leader of the Boston gang op­er­at­ing in the Cité Soleil slum.

“One less gang leader,” the Prime Min­is­ter de­clared on so­cial me­dia, vow­ing that the fight to free Haiti from crim­i­nal gangs would con­tin­ue.

Sain­til’s gang is af­fil­i­at­ed with the pow­er­ful Viv Ansanm coali­tion, which con­trols large sec­tions of the cap­i­tal and has ex­pand­ed in­to oth­er parts of the coun­try.

While Hait­ian po­lice said Sain­til died from mul­ti­ple gun­shot wounds sus­tained dur­ing an op­er­a­tion, the Na­tion­al Hu­man Rights De­fense Net­work re­port­ed that he was crit­i­cal­ly in­jured in an ex­plo­sive drone strike tar­get­ing his ve­hi­cle on Thurs­day night and died Fri­day.

The hu­man rights or­gan­i­sa­tion said at least sev­en ex­plo­sive drones were de­ployed in co­or­di­nat­ed op­er­a­tions across sev­er­al gang-con­trolled com­mu­ni­ties.

It re­port­ed that five gang mem­bers were killed and ap­prox­i­mate­ly 15 oth­ers in­jured in the at­tack tar­get­ing Sain­til, while ad­di­tion­al ca­su­al­ties were re­port­ed dur­ing sep­a­rate con­fronta­tions.

The op­er­a­tions come amid an ex­pand­ed in­ter­na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty pres­ence, in­clud­ing the de­ploy­ment of 2,500 Sal­vado­ran troops fol­low­ing the dis­ap­pear­ance of four Sal­vado­ran avi­a­tion tech­ni­cians dur­ing a gang am­bush last month.

Se­cu­ri­ty forces have al­so tar­get­ed Wil­son Joseph, leader of the no­to­ri­ous 400 Ma­wozo gang, whose home was bombed dur­ing a re­cent op­er­a­tion. Joseph re­port­ed­ly sur­vived and has since gone in­to hid­ing.

The hu­man rights or­gan­i­sa­tion al­so raised con­cerns about civil­ian ca­su­al­ties from the drone at­tacks, as au­thor­i­ties con­tin­ue ef­forts to dis­man­tle the gangs that con­trol large sec­tions of Haiti.

The in­ten­si­fied of­fen­sive is aimed at restor­ing se­cu­ri­ty in the vi­o­lence-plagued coun­try, al­though ques­tions re­main about co­or­di­na­tion among the var­i­ous na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al forces in­volved. —PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (CMC)