By Stuart Ramsay, chief correspondent, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti
The United States is accelerating its support for the mission – because it declares gang terrorists.
This designation, combined with the use of increasingly sophisticated monitoring equipment, means that this unit and others can now aggressively target gang leaders using deadly force.
It is understood that these types of operations are already underway.
The streets are fatal and there is almost no light, there is little electricity in this part of the city. There is a sense of the coverage threat, the soldiers and the police that we are with scan roads and alleys, and use spotlights to look in dark buildings, many now ruin after heavy fights between the gangs and the Haitian police supported by the Kenyans.
MRAPs make their way on the streets
MRAPs make their way on the streets
They know that gang members hide inside, even inside the ruins of their old hiding places, which were formerly family houses, now taken by gangs.
The soldiers tell me that he will soon start to rain. I ask if they fear being stuck in the torrential showers so common in this mountainous country of the Caribbean.
“I am not talking about water,” said one of them, faceless in the black ground of the interior of the vehicle.
“I’m talking about bullets,” he said, laughing. The rest of his crew laughs with him.
In front of us, I see a motorcycle appearing on a turning point on the road.
Apart from the convoy, there is no one else to see, and the Kenyans say that in this district, motorcyclists are likely to be gang observers – but they ignore it.
In a few minutes, the radio commander’s radio mission cracks in life, one of the other convoy vehicles reports.
