Haiti Prime Minister Garry Conille has asked the Haitian police, with the support of the country’s small armed forces and the Kenya-led multinational security force, to begin launching operations gradually in areas controlled by armed gangs.

Conille made the announcement late Wednesday in an address to the nation in which he also announced that 14 communities currently under the control of criminal armed groups, will be placed under a state of emergency. The decision, he said, was made in concert with the transitional presidential council.

“The ultimate objection is to retake all of the areas that are controlled by gangs, house by house, neighborhood by neighborhood and city by city,” Conille said.

The focus on gang-controlled communities, most of them in the West and Artibonite regions, are part of a series of measures the prime minister said the government plans to launch in the coming days “to tackle the insecurity and establish peace in the country.” The announcement came a day after 200 Kenyan police officers arrived in Haiti to reinforce the Multinational Security Support mission, which is backed by the United Nations and largely funded by the U.S.

Earlier in the day, some of the Kenyan police officers joined Haitian SWAT officers on a patrol of the capital that took them from the Champs-de-Mars across from the presidential palace to the center of a deserted downtown. The same day, the country’s prison authorities relocated more than 150 inmates from a prison in the city of Carrefour, south of Port-au-Prince.

Armed gangs currently control more than 80% of Port-au-Prince and parts of the Artibonite region north of the capital. Although they have been relatively quiet in the capital they continue to pose a threat. Police this week reported the seizure of 5,000 bullets after two men attempted to transport them from Mirebalais in the Central Plateau to the capital. One of the men was killed in a shootout with police and the other fled, Haiti National Police spokesman Michel-Ange Louis-Jeune said.

An attempt by armed gangs to take over a police station Monday in the town of Moro in the Artibonite left four people dead and 11 injured, said Bertide Horace, a spokesperson with the group Commission for Dialogue and Awareness to Save the Artibonite. Pleading for a deployment of police officers and equipment to the region, Horace said during an interview on Magik 9 radio station that gangs are becoming increasingly aggressive and residents have resorted to taking charge of their own security due to the lack of police presence in the rice-growing region.

“I am asking the population in these communes to remain vigilant and calm,” Conille said, noting that in the coming days he will launch a national campaign on security targeted at getting Haitians to join the fight. “Every citizen should feel that they are implicated and responsible for their areas.”

“The process that we have started here will not be easy,” he added. “And I will tell you, it won’t be quick.”

Conille said El Salvador, Colombia and Jamaica are examples of countries that have “10 times the resources than us,” but have shown through their efforts to go after armed groups that “that the battle to put a country in its normal state demands time and the participation of all of society.”

Conille also asked journalists “to avoid providing live or delayed reports that could provide information to gangs” on law enforcement operations. He also promised to reinforce the justice system and to fight corruption to ensure that “each citizen regardless of his status is equal before the law.”

The international community has called for Haiti and its partners to address corruption and issues in the judiciary. Neither is an easy task given the current security environment, lack of oversight over the actions of those in power and the fact that Conille and the country’s seven presidents and two observers must hand over power in February 2026.

As a stark reminder of the dangers facing officers of the court, on April 23 a judge of the district court in Pilate in the North region was killed on his way to work. On May 13 a judge in L’Estère in the Artibonite region was also murdered. The perpetrators have yet to be identified, the U.N. political office in Haiti recently reported to the Security Council.

Conille did not go into details on how the country’s security forces will carry out operations. The army has even less equipment than the Haitian police and its deployment to the airport and Champs-de-Mars during the recent gang crisis to assist police came only after much cajoling due to historical tensions between the two groups and because of a U.S. policy that recognizes the Haiti National Police but not the army.

Meanwhile, Haitian police and Kenyan forces are still trying to figure out ways to work together effectively.

On Wednesday, Kenyan and Haitian police officers carried out a joint patrol of the capital. The Kenyans, who now number about 400 after a second contingent arrived on Tuesday, were observed climbing out of the back of several tan-colored armored vehicles downtown.

It was not an operation, but rather “a patrol to permit the Kenyans to get an idea, more or less, of the different areas they will need to intervene in,” said Louis-Jeune, the police spokesman.

Shortly after the cops arrived on Rue Pavé in the center of downtown shots were heard. Louis-Jeune said that contrary to reports that there was an exchange of gunfire between armed bandits and the Kenyans, who were seen on video firing their weapons, there was no confrontation with gangs. Police, he said, fired warning shots.

“You know we are in a tense situation, and the presence of police already doesn’t sit well with the gangs,” he said.

The patrol’s arrival downtown was a rare event. Once teeming with street merchants, the area has become off limits and is today a deserted no-man’s-land marked by burned cars and abandoned buildings following the gangs’ relentless attacks that began on Feb. 29.

During their outing, the Kenyans came to face-to-face with another reality of policing in Haiti: inoperable vehicles. One of the new armored vehicles being driven by the Kenyans had a mechanical failure and had to be towed away, a spokesman for the Kenya-led mission confirmed to the Miami Herald.

It is unclear if the broken-down vehicle is among several new armored carriers that the United States recently provided to Haiti.

But keeping vehicles running maybe the least of the mission’s challenges.

In another sign of how tense and unpredictable the situation remains, the country’s prison administration on Wednesday relocated inmates from the facility in Carrefour to one in rural Petit-Goave, in another region and jurisdiction.

Marie Yolene Gilles, a human-rights advocate who monitors Haiti prisons, said no reasons were given for the move. She suspects the move may be an attempt by the prison system to prevent another mass break like the ones in early March that led to the escape of over 4,000 inmates, most of whom remain at large. One of Haiti’s largest suburbs, Carrefour today lacks a robust police presence after forces recently came under repeated gang attacks.

Late last month, the National Haitian Police Union said two divisional police inspectors and a civilian were killed in the Arcachon 32 neighborhood of Carrefour. In April, two police officers were among seven people killed by gangs when the city’s central police station and a substation were attacked and looted by gang members.

Gilles said while she understands authorities’ desire to protect the prison from an attack, and moving that many prisoners through gang-controlled streets presents challenges, she cannot condone the way in which the inmates’ rights were violated during transport.

Video images showed the inmates naked and standing neck to neck in the back of an open truck that is often used to transport cattle.

“When the prison administration reacts this way, it clearly shows us that they don’t have respect for the rights of the people it’s responsible for guarding inside the prisons,” said Gilles, executive director of Port-au-Prince-based Fondasyon Je Klere/Eyes Wide Open Foundation. said. “It’s violating their rights.”

“Up to now the country’s authorities haven’t taken any measures to stop losing territory,” she siad. “Today, despite the changes that have taken place in the police... they are taking prisoners from one jurisdiction and sending them to another contrary to the law.”

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