A prison break in central Haiti has resulted in the deaths of at least 11 inmates, the authorities said, the third such incident this year amid a continuing humanitarian crisis fuelled by gang violence.
Police said inmates broke out of a prison in the coastal city of Saint-Marc, some 88km (55 miles) north of the capital, Port-au-Prince, on Friday.
Eleven suspected escaped inmates were killed in shootouts with police and one was arrested, according to Michel Ange Louis Jeune, spokesman for Haiti’s National Police, according to The Associated Press news agency.
He did not provide further details, including how many inmates escaped.
“The situation is under control but the results are catastrophic. All the cops’ dormitories have burnt down. The archives have burnt down. They’ve set everything on fire except their cells,” State Prosecutor Venson Francois said, the Reuters news agency reported.
Francois warned that residents should remain vigilant and watch for escapees.
Saint-Marc Mayor Myriam Fievre, meanwhile, said 12 prisoners were killed, according to Reuters.
Social media footage that could not be immediately verified, appeared to show people climbing over walls and smoke streaming out of walls lined with barbed wire, a loud explosion and fire.
Haitian prisons are severely overcrowded and pretrial detentions can stretch for years.
Walter Montas, a local government official, said the incident spiralled from a protest as prisoners were going without food and facing poor health conditions.
In December 2014, nearly three dozen of 500 inmates escaped from a prison in Saint-Marc after sawing through steel bars, authorities said.
Conditions in Haiti’s prisons are squalid, with many cells filled to close to quadruple their capacity, the United Nations has said. A lack of basic necessities has killed 109 inmates so far this year.
Prison officials had also been on strike demanding better treatment, local media reported.
Prison breaks from Haiti’s two largest jails in March this year dwindled the imprisoned population from nearly 12,000 at that time to 7,500 in June, according to UN data.
The government was forced to declare a state of emergency amid a surge in gang violence in the Caribbean nation.
An uptick in attacks across Port-au-Prince eventually prompted the resignation of Haiti’s unelected prime minister, Ariel Henry, the creation of a transitional presidential council and the deployment of Kenyan police as part of a UN-backed mission to quell the violence.
Police have struggled to hold off gangs as the delivery of funds, personnel and equipment for the UN-backed security mission first requested in 2022 continues to lag.
The unrest has forced about 600,000 people to flee their homes for elsewhere in Haiti and some five million people – about half the population – into severe hunger.
