AROUND THE WORLD: at least 12 suspected criminals beaten to death and burned in Haiti capital

Haiti’s tailspin into humanitarian crisis and bloodshed has racked up its latest moment of horror after at least a dozen suspected criminals were beaten to death and burned in broad daylight on the streets of its capital, Port-au-Prince.

Horrifying footage of the incident showed the bloodied men being forced to lie on the asphalt by rifle-wielding police before bystanders piled tyres on top of them, doused them with petrol and set them alight.

One eyewitness told the Associated Press the lynch mob seized the victims from police after they were detained in Port-au-Prince’s Canapé-Vert neighbourhood and proceeded to beat and stone them before burning their bodies. 

Hundreds of onlookers flocked to the scene – where the news agency’s reporter saw 13 burning bodies – to watch the nightmarish attack.

In a statement posted on Facebook, Haiti’s national police said its officers had intercepted a group of suspected smugglers travelling in a minibus but that subsequently more than 12 of those men were “unfortunately lynched by members of the population”. An accompanying video showed the handguns and AK47 magazines police said had been seized with the victims.

The lynching came as Haiti’s already dramatic social, political and humanitarian crisis – which the UN security council is set to discuss on Tuesday – intensified even further.

In just six days, between 14 and 19 April, nearly 70 people were killed in clashes involving gangs in Port-au-Prince’s largest shantytown, Cité Soleil, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. About 40 of the dead were shot or stabbed. At least two were children.

“Fighting is raging in Cité Soleil … The population feels under siege. They can no longer leave their homes for fear of gun violence and gang terror,” the UN’s humanitarian coordinator in Haiti, Ulrika Richardson, said in a statement.

That warning came a month after the UN called for the deployment of an international “specialised support force” to Haiti after more than 530 people were killed in the opening weeks of this year, causing many clinics and schools to shut down. Between January and March the UN human rights office counted 531 killings, 300 injuries and 277 kidnappings in gang-related incidents, mostly in Haiti’s gang-dominated capital.