Haiti prepares for influx of foreign forces as locals flee violence
Warning: This article contains graphic and distressing content
Members of the Haitian armed forces patrol the streets in Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, on May 11.
Haiti is preparing for the long-anticipated arrival of a multinational security mission, headed by 1000 armed police officers from Kenya and backed by pledges of aid by the United States and Europe.
It is hoped their arrival will restore stability to the beleaguered nation, which is at risk of becoming a failed state.
A US military cargo plane lands at Toussaint Louverture airport in Port-au-Prince on May 11.
Scores of US military planes have been landing at the shuttered airport in Port-au-Prince in recent weeks, carrying civilian contractors, life-saving supplies, building materials and heavy equipment ahead of the anticipated arrival of the multinational mission.
The Caribbean nation has been in turmoil since February, when gang warfare spiraled with a series of coordinated attacks - including one in March which saw the nation's two largest prisons stormed and more than 4,000 inmates released.
Pictured is a police officer sitting inside his vehicle with the windscreen peppered with bullet holes.
With armed gangs now controlling around 80 per cent of the capital, the police have largely been rendered ineffectual and unable to stem the spiraling violence.
Elections have not been held in Haiti since 2016.
The country's last president, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated in 2021, and the current prime minister and acting president, Ariel Henry, is stuck in Puerto Rico, unable to fly back to Haiti.
Students dismissed from school walk past a makeshift barricade constructed from the shell of a burnt-out vehicle and weighed down with tyres, in the Canapé Vert area of Haiti's capital on May 14.
Neighbourhoods have become war zones in Port-au-Prince, with even previously protected and affluent communities exposed to horrific violence.
Girls holding hands are led past a burnt car blocking the street as they evacuate the Delmas 22 neighbourhood in Port-au-Prince on May 2.
The bloodshed has prompted tens of thousands of Haitians to flee to the rural south or across the border to the Dominican Republic, where they are being met with hostility and the threat of deportation.
A motorcycle taxi carries a coffin for a family who live in the Kenscoff community, in the foothills of the Chaîne de la Selle mountain range, on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince.
At least 2,500 people have died or been injured in gang violence in Haiti between January and March this year, according to United Nations estimates - a figure that has continued to surge in more recent months.
April 3
More than 53,000 people fled Haiti's capital in less than three weeks in April - the vast majority to escape unrelenting gang violence, according to a United Nations report.
More than 60 per cent are headed to Haiti's rural southern region, which worries UN officials because it lacks the necessary infrastructure to cope with the influx.
Other Haitians fleeing the violence arrived in Mexico from where they crossed into the United States for their appointment with officials to seek asylum.
The southern region already hosts more than 116,000 Haitians who previously left Port-au-Prince.
Most Haitians leaving the capital have been crowding into buses, risking travel through gang-controlled territory where gang rapes have been reported and gunmen have been known to open fire on public transport.
More than 1500 people have been reported killed up, and another 17,000 have been left homeless, according to the UN.
Haitians prayed for peace and an end to the bloodshed as thousands packed churches across the nation over the Easter holiday.
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