• Footage of strange blue lights has arisen following Morocco’s tragic earthquake 
• Experts say the glow may be a rare phenomenon called ‘earthquake lights’ 

By Lauren Haughey

Published: 09:44 EDT, 13 September 2023 | Updated: 20:54 EDT, 13 September 2023

Survivors of Morocco’s deadliest earthquake in sixty years have told of the horror of living alongside dead bodies still submerged under collapsed homes, which four days on from the disaster are beginning to rot.

Aziz, a villager from Ijoukak, 10 miles from the quake’s epicentre, said: ‘Until now we have found no survivors, only the dead buried under the rubble… the smell of corpses is very, very strong. We still have no electricity and no water.’ 

The death toll has now surpassed 2,800 and is expected to rise even further, as hopes fade of bringing out those still trapped under piles of debris following Friday’s 6.8-magnitude quake.

Desperate villagers still waiting for aid in the worst-hit regions of the Atlas mountains reported being left to search for survivors themselves, digging with their bare hands to get the bodies of their neighbours and loved ones out of the rubble.

After the fourth night sleeping outside for many Moroccans on Monday – either in makeshift tents or under the stars in rural areas and on the streets of Marrakech – many are waking up today still waiting for help.

Because homes in quake-hit villages of the High Atlas mountains are typically made of mud bricks, stone and clay, it is usually harder for people to survive in them than in modern buildings destroyed by quakes. 

‘When all of that collapses, you don’t have much chance of surviving, because there are no air pockets,’ Rescuers Without Borders’ founder, Arnaud Fraisse, said. 

‘People are generally suffocated by the dust.’

Abdelqader Tarfay, the general secretary of Morocco’s National Health Union, said that the greatest challenge for medics and rescue teams is still to get trapped people out.

‘Then they have to work on removing the remaining corpses under the rubble so that they do not rot,’ he told Al Jazeera.

Homes, mosques and schools have been decimated, with a religious teacher in the village of Tafeghaghte saying that 22 of his students had been killed.

Some residents in the worst-hit mountain regions criticised the government’s relief efforts, saying that while other communities had received assistance they have had to fend for themselves.

Said Hartattouch said it was understandable why some communities were receiving state assistance while others were not, due to the enormity of the destruction that has killed more than 2,800 people.

Remote hamlets in the areas around Ijoukak are still not accessible, the Guardian reports, with ‘huge boulders blocking the roads’. 

‘The problem for Atlas Mountains is that it is big… ‘It’s not possible to help everyone’.

The 34-year-old was at work in Marrakech when the 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck.

The moment the earth began to shake, he rushed to his family’s village more than 60 miles away in the High Atlas Mountains, anxious to get to his mother and two sisters.

When he arrived several hours later, his childhood home lay in ruins.

Speaking outside the rubble of the earth-and-straw house, Hartattouch said that in the days following the quake he had sometimes felt like he was in a horrible dream.

‘But then you wake up the day after and you find reality,’ he said.

While Hartattouch’s mother and sisters survived, fifteen other people from the close community of about 100 people perished.

Among them was his uncle, who was buried by a collapsing wall after he fled his home, and a close family friend who lived next door.

The village of Tinmel lies in a state of devastation. The homes have been crushed and the historic 12th-century mosque that sits at the end of the village and attracted tourists from around the world is now a ruin.

Recounting his return to the village, delayed due to a road blocked by a landslide, Hartattouch described a scramble inside his destroyed family home to gather blankets and his mother’s insulin.

With nowhere to go, the villagers have slept out in the open since the earthquake struck on Friday. 

Residents say the village has received little government help and instead relied on charitable donations. A mother of a 15-day-old baby boy said the child needed milk formula and medicine.

There is an urgent need for tents to protect the people from the dropping temperatures at night.

‘It is the beginning of the cold weather, the first day was very tough,’ Hartattouch said.

Some 10,000 people are still missing in Libya after ‘catastrophic’ floods obliterated entire neighbourhoods, with officials warning the death toll is ‘huge’ and could end up in the thousands. 

Mediterranean storm Daniel hit the county on Sunday night and wreaked havoc and flash flooding in towns across in eastern Libya but the worst hit was Derna, where heavy rainfall broke dams and washed away entire communities.

There are still areas that rescuers are struggling to reach in the city and many of the thousands who are missing there are believed to have been carried away by the fast-paced and churning waters after two upstream dams burst.

‘The situation is catastrophic,’ said Othman Abduljaleel, the health minister in Libya’s eastern government. ‘The bodies are still lying on the ground in many parts (of the city). Hospitals are filled with bodies. And there are areas we have yet to reach.’

Authorities estimated earlier that as many as 2,000 people may have perished in Derna alone. The Ambulance and Emergency Authority, which coordinates search and rescue efforts, said about 2,300 people died in Derna but did not clarify what that figure was based on.

Tamer Ramadan, Libya envoy for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said 10,000 people were missing after the unprecedented flooding. 

‘Our teams on the ground are still doing their assessment (but) from what we see and from the news coming to us, the death toll is huge,’ he told reporters in Geneva via video link from Tunis.

‘It might reach to the thousands,’ he said in English. ‘We don’t have a definite number right now.’

Referring to Friday’s devastating earthquake in Morocco, on the other side of North Africa, Ramadan said the situation in Libya was ‘as devastating as the situation in Morocco.’

Ossama Hamad, Prime Minister of the government in eastern Libya, said that many of the missing were believed to have been carried away after two upstream dams burst. He said the devastation in Derna is far beyond the capabilities of his country.

After more than a decade of chaos, Libya remains divided between two rival administrations: one in the east and one in the west, each backed by different militias and foreign governments. The conflict has left the oil rich North African country with crumbling and inadequate infrastructure.

Derna was declared a disaster zone and more bodies were still under the rubble in the city’s neighborhoods, or washed away to the sea, according to Abduljaleel, the health minister.

Residents posted videos online showing major devastation. Entire residential blocks were erased along Wadi Derna, a river that runs down from the mountains through the city center. Multi-story apartment buildings that once stood well back from the river were partially collapsed into mud.

Abduljaleel said the city was inaccessible and bodies were scattered all over, according to Libya’s state-run news agency. 

‘The situation was more significant and worse than we expected. An international intervention is needed,’ he was quoted as saying.

Emergency responders, including troops, government workers, volunteers and residents were digging through rubble to recover the dead. They also used inflatable boats to retrieve bodies from the water. Excavators and other equipment have yet to arrive in Derna.

But for some rescuers, their efforts to save others had fatal consequences in a sign of just how dangerous the work is. The Libyan Red Crescent said three of its workers had died while helping families in Derna.

Many residents described scenes of chaos when floods hit the centre. They heard loud explosions at night and realized that dams outside the city collapsed, sending a wall of water that ‘erased everything in its way,’ said Ahmed Abdalla, a Derna resident.

World Health Organization spokeswoman Margaret Harris meanwhile described the situation in Libya as ‘a calamity of epic proportions’.

Experts have described storm Daniel – which killed at least 27 people when it struck parts of Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey in recent days – as ‘extreme in terms of the amount of water falling in a space of 24 hours’.

In eastern Libya, the storm hit the coastal town of Jabal al-Akhdar especially hard, as well as Benghazi, where a curfew was declared and schools closed for several days.

Workers said they buried more than 200 bodies in one cemetery in Derna on Monday. Footage overnight showed dozens more bodies on the ground, covered by blankets or sheets, in a hospital yard in Derna.

The storm hit other areas in eastern Libya, including the town of Bayda, where about 50 people were reported dead. The Medical Center of Bayda, the main hospital, was flooded and patients had to be evacuated, according to footage shared by the center on Facebook.

Other towns that suffered, included Susa, Marj and Shahatt, according to the government. Hundreds of families were displaced and took shelter in schools and other government buildings in the city of Benghazi and elsewhere in eastern Libya.

Northeast Libya is one of the country’s most fertile and green regions. The Jabal al-Akhdar area – where Bayda, Marj and Shahatt are located – has one of the country’s highest average annual rainfalls, according to the World Bank.

Authorities in eastern and western Libya rushed to help Derna residents. The Health Ministry in Tripoli said a plane carrying 14 tons of medical equipment, drugs and body bags, along with health care workers headed Tuesday to Benghazi. Other agencies across the country said they would send humanitarian aid to Derna.

The prime minister also announced three days of mourning and ordered flags across the country to be lowered to half-staff.

Controlling eastern and western Libya, Cmdr. Khalifa Hifter deployed troops to help residents in Benghazi and other eastern towns. 

Ahmed al-Mosmari, a spokesperson for Hifter’s forces, said they lost contact with five troops who were helping besieged families in Bayda.

Foreign governments also sent messages of support to Libya.

Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates were among those that said they would send humanitarian assistance and teams to help with search and rescue efforts. The U.S. Embassy said Monday it was contacting the United Nations and Libyan authorities on how to deliver aid to the most affected areas.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi convened his military commanders on Tuesday to arrange urgent assistance to Libya. He said in televised comments that the military would deploy equipment and personnel in coordination with eastern Libyan forces to help affected communities.

Since a 2011 uprising that toppled and later killed long-time ruler Moammar Gadhafi, Libya has lacked a central government and the resulting lawlessness has meant dwindling investment in the country’s roads and public services and also minimal regulation of private building. 

The country is now split between rival governments in the east and west, each backed by an array of militias.

Derna itself, along with the city of Sirte, was controlled by extremist groups for years, at one point by those who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, until forces loyal to the east-based government expelled them in 2018.

Known for its white-painted houses and palm gardens, Derna is about 900 kilometers (560 miles) east of the capital of Tripoli. 

It is controlled by the forces of powerful military commander Khalifa Hifter, who is allied with the east Libya government. The rival government in west Libya, based in Tripoli, is allied with other armed groups.

Much of Derna was built by Italy when Libya was under Italian occupation in the first half of the 20th century. 

Survivors of the most powerful earthquake to hit Morocco in 120 years now face being crushed by boulders dislodged by the tremor, with many forced to sleep outside after entire mountain villages were flattened.

Experts have warned that deadly after-shocks will continue to ravage the country, with seismologists saying more than 25 have already been felt since Friday’s quake – the deadliest in 60 years. 

The death toll has continued to climb as bodies are being pulled from the rubble three days after the 6.8-magnitude quake hit, with officials saying today that at least 2,500 people lost their lives with thousands more injured and missing. 

A mother and her three sons who made it out alive have told of their incredible escape – revealing how they ran from their home in the worst-affected mountainous region mere seconds before it came crashing down.

Khadija Elhil Ali, 32, and her children initially had no idea what was happening when the first tremors began late on Friday night in their tiny hillside village of Asflala, 35 miles south of Marrakech in the Atlas mountains.

‘We soon realised it was an earthquake,’ Khadija told MailOnline, ‘stones were falling in on us from the roof and we knew we must get out. ‘Not long after we did, the whole thing fell down.’ 

Khadija’s husband Hassan, 44, who had been working in Marrakech, arrived home the next morning, overjoyed that his family were safe, but also devastated to see the house which had been in his family for more than a century, reduced to rubble.

Like all the villagers, the couple and their sons, aged 16, 11 and six, are sleeping in tents outside at night, fearful of more after-shocks.

Incredibly, the residents of Asflala escaped without death or serious injury, despite 70 of the 90 homes being destroyed or badly damaged.

‘We are the lucky ones,’ said seasonal worker Hassan, ‘we know that deeper in the mountains entire villages have been wiped out and we pray for them.

‘But I was so shocked when I saw my house in ruins and the street outside blocked by boulders. We will not be able to rebuild this without government help, but so far we’ve heard nothing from them or any charities.

‘They have other priorities for now. ‘

The family’s next-door neighbour Mtouggi Hussein, in his 80s, one of the village’s oldest residents, also lost his house, and now wonders whether he will ever see it rebuilt in his own lifetime.

‘When the earthquake came, I heard voices shouting in the street outside and the lights went out, but people came and helped me out of my house, or I wouldn’t be here today,’ he told MailOnline.

Clambering around the narrow rock-strewn streets and passageways of the village, barely a building appears untouched, with deep cracks forming in the brick and stonework, and huge gaping holes in walls and roofs which were never there before.

Equally worrying, in the hills above the village, huge boulders dislodged by the quake, seem to glower down on the fragile habitations below.

It only underscores the monumental task faced by the Moroccan government in the weeks and months to come, once the immediate work of providing shelter and food is under control.

A little further down the hillside, a family of eight in a more modern house only 20 years old saw the concrete floor drop out of their courtyard, leaving a 15ft deep, 20ft wide chasm to the basement below.

In the rubble were children’s toys and a mud-covered teddy bear.

Father-of-four Hassan Hossa Benali, 42, showed the perilous route to the family kitchen as he stepped gingerly over the void below, balancing on a single plank of wood.

‘We are coming to the house in the daytime to make food, but at nights we sleep in the tents with everyone else,’ he said.

No expert assessment has been made of his creaking house, nor of any of the properties in the village, but they trust that their luck will hold each time they enter to gather belongings from inside the rickety structures.

A few valleys over in Amizmiz, closer to the epicentre of the quake, estimates put the death toll at 2,000 people in that town alone, making the rapidly rising official confirmed total of victims of 2,497 seem extremely conservative.

Moroccans have revealed the traumatising choices they were forced to make as the quake hit late on Friday – with one man saying he watched his parents die as he had a split second to save his 11-year-old son instead.

‘Our house was up there,’ Tayeb ait Ighenbaz told the BBC pointing to a pile of rubble and debris where it once stood. ‘You can see the white blankets and the furniture too. Everything else has gone.’

He said, through tears: ‘I had to choose between my parents and son… I couldn’t help my parents because the wall fell over half of their bodies. It’s so sad. I saw my parents dying.’

Among the luckier ones, Mohamed, a resident of the small town of Moulay Brahim, risked his life to save his wife and two small children, kicking in the door to the room they were trapped in as rubble fell around him.

While the family’s home was heavily damaged and the family have been forced to live in a tent, they told Al Jazeera they are simply grateful to be alive.

Foreign teams have today joined the intensifying race against the clock to rescue any remaining survivors from beneath the rubble of flattened mountain villages. 

British rescuers are among the international operatives assisting, after Rabat announced yesterday it had accepted offers from the UK, Spain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates ‘to send search and rescue teams’.

It noted the foreign teams were in contact with Moroccan authorities to coordinate efforts, and said only four offers had been accepted so far, arguing that ‘a lack of coordination could be counterproductive’.

President Emmanuel Macron said France was willing to provide aid ‘the second’ Morocco requested it.

Around 300,000 people were affected by the quake, the UN has estimated, with many forced to sleep in rural encampments and on the streets of Marrakech for the past three nights.

Terrifying footage shows the moment people ran for their lives as Marrakech was rocked by the powerful magnitude quake, the epicentre of which was around 40 miles away, destroying homes and damaging historic buildings.

But the worst affected areas were the douars, indigenous Amazigh villages in the High Atlas Mountains, which pictures show have been completely razed to the ground in many cases.

With countless people still missing, rescuers are now in a growing race against time to dig any survivors from the rubble of devastated mountain villages, with many admitting that this is now a mission to recover bodies.

A French aid group that specializes in locating people trapped under debris said it is withdrawing an offer to send a nine-person search-and-rescue team after waiting without success for a green light from Morocco to deploy. Rescuers Without Borders’ founder, Arnaud Fraisse, said ‘our role is not to find bodies.’ 

Because homes in quake-hit villages of the High Atlas mountains are typically made of mud bricks with roofs of wood, stone and clay, he said, the hope of finding survivors at this point is slim.

‘When all of that collapses, you don’t have much chance of surviving, because there are no air pockets,’ Fraisse said – a contrast to places where buildings are made of concrete or other strong materials. ‘People are generally suffocated by the dust.’

‘It’s difficult to pull people out alive because most of the walls and ceilings turned to earthen rubble when they fell, burying whoever was inside without leaving air spaces,’ a military rescue worker, who asked not to be named, said at an army centre south of Marrakech near the epicentre.

With many homes fashioned out of mud bricks and timber or cement and breeze blocks, structures crumbled easily in mounds of debris when the quake struck late on Friday evening, without creating the pockets of air that earthquake-ready concrete buildings can provide.

In a region not used to such powerful quakes, even concrete homes or buildings often lack anti-seismic design, experts said, leaving survivors and rescuers to sift through mounds of rubble with hardly any walls left, where homes once stood.

‘This kind of collapse causes greater air tightness due to the types of material, like mud brick,’ Antonio Nogales, coordinator of operations for Firemen United without Borders, a Spanish rescue team on the ground, told Spain’s TVE broadcaster.

‘Steel and concrete facilitate the possibility of survivors, but these (mud and brick) materials (common in Morocco) mean that in the first moments the chances of getting people out alive are reduced,’ Nogales said.

Those who have survived Morocco’s deadliest earthquake in more than six decades have been struggling to find food, water and shelter, amid warnings of the humanitarian disaster worsening.

On Sunday, many across the country were forced to spend a third night in the open after the 6.8 magnitude quake hit late on Friday. 

‘I’m still traumatised by what I experienced yesterday. I’d rather stay here with my wife and six-year-old son than risk death because of a collapsing roof,’ a Marrakech resident called Bilal told Middle East Eye.

In Marrakech, several hundred people who are unable to return home have since set up camp in Place des Ferblantiers, near the south-west of the city and the medina. 

Some stretched out on the central reservation of the city’s main road, Mohamed VI Avenue, while others lay at the foot of their parked cars. 

The earthquake cracked and crumbled parts of the walls that surround Marrakech’s old city, a UNESCO World Heritage site built in the 12th century. 

The city is Morocco’s most widely visited destination, known for its palaces, spice markets, tanneries and Jemaa El Fna, a vibrant square full of food vendors and musicians. 

But once aid crews and soldiers leave, the challenges facing hundreds of thousands who call the area home will likely remain.

The Red Cross warned it could take years to repair the damage caused by the quake.

‘It won’t be a matter of a week or two… We are counting on a response that will take months, if not years,’ said Hossam Elsharkawi, its Middle East and North Africa director.

Members of the Moroccan Parliament are scheduled to convene Monday to create a government fund for earthquake response at the request of King Mohammed VI.

The kingdom has declared three days of national mourning in the wake of the disaster. 

Tourists and locals have described rushing to get out of the buildings they were in and being worried about returning to houses and hotels in the aftermath.

Holidaymaker Mark Chester and his wife Julie from Southampton were in the Medina Gardens hotel in Marrakech when it occurred shortly after 11pm on Friday.

‘We had just gone to bed and we soon realised what was going on,’ recalled civil servant Mr Chester, 56.

‘We ran out of the building and eventually the hotel put beds and sunbeds out on the grass so that people could sleep outside. There was a good spirit of co-operation between the people there, about three-quarters of them British.

‘At about 6.30pm we were allowed back inside, but everyone was still nervous about aftershocks.’ 

Tourists and citizens have reported to hospitals in Marrakech and elsewhere to donate blood for the injured. Among the donors were members of Morocco’s national football team.

Other volunteers organised food and essential goods to help quake victims, after complaints that authorities were slow to respond.

‘Everyone must mobilise,’ said one volunteer, Mohamed Belkaid, 65. ‘And that includes the authorities, but they seem to be absent.’

The education ministry announced that school classes were ‘suspended’ in the worst-hit villages of Al-Haouz province, the quake epicentre.

Some parts of Marrakech’s historic medina and its network of alleyways saw significant damage, with mounds of rubble and crumpled buildings in the World Heritage site.

Videos also show dust emanating from parts of the Koutoubia Mosque, one of the city’s best known historic sites. 

The United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva began its session on Monday with a minute’s silence for the quake victims.

‘We are part of a global collectivity: humanity,’ said Gambia’s ambassador Muhammadu Kah, who proposed the tribute.

The quake was the deadliest in Morocco since a 1960 earthquake destroyed Agadir, killing at least 12,000 people.

This map reveals the epicentre of the deadly Morocco earthquake, which killed over 2,500 people and injured thousands more when it struck last Friday.

Geologists said the 6.8 magnitude tremor was the biggest quake to hit the heart of the country in more than 120 years and the deadliest in six decades.

Rescuers are still searching for survivors, with some in remote areas forced to dig with their bare hands because heavy lifting machinery can’t get to them.

The epicentre of the earthquake, which struck at 23:11 local time (23:11 BST) on Friday, was in the High Atlas Mountains, 44 miles (71km) south-west of Marrakesh, at a depth of 11.5 miles (18.5km), the US Geological Survey said.

The main tectonic driver is the collision between the Eurasian and African plates, the boundary for which sits around 350 miles (563km) north from the epicentre.

This is what originally led to the formation of the Atlas Mountains, which run through Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia.

Currently, collisions between the Eurasian and African plates are what is causing the increased seismicity in the area, with GPS measurements showing that the Atlas Mountains are moving about 1 millimetre closer to each other every year.  

This compression is what is causing a friction between plates, and in turn likely led to the latest quake, according to José A. Peláez, a professor in geophysics at the Universidad de Jaén.

The High Atlas Mountains also have a unique geological feature where the Earth’s outermost layer – known as the lithosphere – is thinner than usual, while there is an unusual rise of the mantle. 

What is particularly unusual about this deadly earthquake, however, is that scientists say such powerful tremors don’t tend to occur in Morocco.

In fact, there hasn’t been any quakes bigger than a magnitude 6.0 within 300 miles (500km) of Friday’s epicentre since before 1900.

Most of the seismic activity relating to the Eurasian and African plates occurs further east in Mediterranean, with Italy, Greece and Turkey particularly affected.

There are usually two main hotspots for earthquakes in Morocco.

The first is offshore, along the Azores-Gibraltar transform fault and the Alboran Sea, while the second is between the Rif mountains in the northern part of the country and Algeria’s Tell Atlas mountain range.

Major earthquakes to hit Morocco in recent years include a 6.4 magnitude tremor in 2016, which struck offshore northeast of the city of Al Hoceïma and killed one person.

There was also a 6.3 magnitude quake that killed 631 people in 2004 and another one of the same intensity in 1960, leading to the deaths of between 12,000 and 15,000 people when it hit near the city of Agadir.

Five years prior to that there was a quake close to the location of the latest tremor, which had a magnitude of about 5.8.

Going further back in history, an earthquake with an estimate magnitude of between 6.5 and 7.0 devastated the cities of Fes and Meknes in 1755, killing at least 15,000 people. 

The official death toll for Friday’s disaster so far stands at 2,681 confirmed dead and at least 2,501 people injured, including more than 1,400 who are seriously hurt.

Tropical Storm Hilary has triggered devastating mudslides across Southern California roadways. 

A mudslide in Palmdale closed several lanes of the 14 Freeway on Sunday, with roads near Ocotillo and part of the I-8 near San Diego also experiencing blockages. 

Crews worked to clear the slides but residents were urged not to undertake unnecessary travel by the California Transportation Department. 

The state is enduring devastating floods and dangerously strong winds, as well as a 5.1 magnitude earthquake in Ventura County and a tornado watch in San Diego.

Meanwhile even Death Valley National Park – often one of the hottest and driest places on earth – has been closed due to flooding.

As Hilary continues to wreak havoc across the state:

• Biden said he was monitoring the storm and urged people to take it seriously;
• Counties in Southern California declared emergencies for the tropical storm;
• A hospital in the Coachella Valley flooded after a nearby pond burst its banks;
• LA and San Diego schools were closed through the weekend until Monday;
• One person was killed and four rescued in Baja California following the storm. 

Falling boulders also blocked a road near Ocotillo, and part of the I-8 near San Diego. 

Palm Springs has been submerged in a deluge of floodwater as Tropical Storm Hilary continues to batter California.

The storm is proving a nightmare for the Coachella Valley as well as for other desert communities and Southern California’s inland mountain ranges.

The area recorded 2.06 inches of rain on Sunday, a record for the August date, a National Weather Service forecaster said.

Shocking footage emerged throughout Sunday of cars, trucks and ambulances swallowed by flood waters in Palm Springs.

The Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage in Palm Springs flooded on Sunday as a result of the record rain. 

‘A pond next to Eisenhower hospital in Rancho Mirage overflowed from heavy rains, sending water pouring into the ER’ NBC reported alongside footage  of flooded corridors. 

‘Crews now working to clean up and sandbag to keep more water out as the rain picks back up’ the outlet added. 

Death Valley National Park was closed due to flooding as a result of the downpour brought by Tropical Storm Hilary. 

The park released shocking footage of streams coursing through its arid land on Sunday. 

The rocky desert landscape near Zabriskie Point was overcome with muddy floodwaters. 

Officials for the national park also warned the situation was likely to get worse.

‘This video was taken near Zabriskie Point earlier this morning. Hurricane Hilary is forecasted to cause heavy rain for the next several days, so conditions are expected to worsen,’ the park wrote on Facebook.

Also on Sunday California was hit by a 5.1 magnitude earthquake as Tropical Storm Hilary made landfall in LA and San Diego with 80mph winds.

The quake centered in Ventura County was felt across parts of Southern California on Sunday afternoon. 

The center is reported to have been four miles southeast of Ojai, about 80 miles northwest of Los Angeles. 

Shaking was reported in Malibu, Porter Ranch, parts of Los Angeles, Manhattan Beach and other locations.

A tornado warning has also been issued for San Diego and the surrounding Alpine and Descanso areas.  

The National Weather Service released the warning at t 3:39 p.m. on Sunday local time, and will last until 4pm. 

The United States Geological Survey, which reports and records earthquakes, said there were at least four aftershocks of magnitude-3.0 or greater. 

It comes as Tropical Storm Hilary makes landfall in Southern California moving up from Mexico at speeds of 25mph, according to the National Hurricane Center.

Residents are contending with winds of 65mph and the expectation of torrential rain, that may bring up to ten inches in a matter of hours in some places. 

At least one person has already died after their vehicle was swept away near Santa Rosalía, after catastrophic flooding swallowed parts of Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula. 

The death occurred when a vehicle was swept away in an overflowing stream. Rescue workers managed to save four other people, said Edith Aguilar Villavicencio, the mayor of Mulege township.

Hilary had maximum sustained winds of 70 mph and was moving northwest at 25 mph as it swept through the cities of Ensenada and Tijuana. 

FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell told CBS during an interview on Sunday that residents can expect ‘significant impact.’

Though the total amount of rain appears unlikely to exceed that of similar storms seen on the East Coast, people should not downplay the threat, Criswell added.

‘People really need to take this storm in California serious,’ she reiterated on ABC. 

Panicked stockpiling and chilling images of empty streets have given a small glimpse into things to come as residents batten down the hatches in preparation for the treacherous weather.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom proclaimed a state of emergency on Saturday for a large swathe of his constituency adding: ‘We’re mobilizing all of government as we prepare and respond to this unprecedented storm.’

While a majority of people took shelter from the storm, others braved wet conditions to bask in the precursor to the storm which had grown to the size of the state of Arizona.

A few stragglers could be seen in rain jackets holding umbrellas as angry seas lashed at a pier in Imperial Beach, while some walked along the coastline while they still could. 

Surfers relished the staggering walls of oceans being built on the coastline with thrill seekers attempting to make the most of the huge swells in Dana Point – despite beaches being closed in the region.

Shelves at grocery stores lay bare the urgency from a community unfamiliar with such storms as stores were left gutted.

Only tinned fish and in some cases plain white bread available at traditionally stocked up stores, with health-crazed Angelinos snapping up all the healthier wholemeal alternatives.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has armed itself with a full staff and crews ready to work on restoring power and clearing downed trees or power lines, the utility said in a statement.

The city’s reservoirs have ‘sufficient capacity’ to handle any increased runoff due to potential flooding, it added.

Electricity utility Southern California Edison, which serves more than 15 million people in the region, said Hilary is on track to impact much of its service area.

The company said it is preparing to respond to outages but urged residents to gather supplies including flashlights, external battery chargers and ice chests.

Forecasters warned that there could be historic flood impacts, especially for San Bernardino and Inyo counties, with Death Valley and Morongo Basin expected to see the most major flooding.

Roads could be closed in Death Valley and Highway 62 according to the Los Angeles Times.

It said high risk areas in LA County include the San Gabriel Mountains, the Antelope Valley – with rains triggering landslides, debris flow, mud flows and rock slides in those parts.

Peak wind gusts could hit as high as 81 mph at Joshua Tree National Park and 67 mph in Wrightwood.

In Anaheim peak gusts could hit 62 mph, 60 mph in Irvine, 58 in Palm Springs and Ontario, 54 in Big Bear Lake, 52 in Riverside, 46 in San Clemente, 43 in San Diego and 41 in San Bernardino.

In Los Angeles County, possible peak wind gusts could be 44 mph in Santa Clarita and Lancaster, 40 in Northridge and Westlake Village, 35 in Avalon on Catalina Island, 32 in Pomona, 31 in Pasadena, 30 in Long Beach, 29 in downtown Los Angeles and 26 in Redondo Beach.

On a summer’s night in July 2021, a group of gunmen stormed the home of Haiti’s president Jovenel Moïse and savagely beat him – before shooting him dead.

Haiti was already gripped by political unrest, but the assassination carried out by 28 foreign mercenaries marked the beginning of the country’s rapid descent into chaos, which today sees it overrun by gangs and gripped by horrific violence.

Just a month later on August 14, the Caribbean island was struck by a deadly 7.2 magnitude earthquake before tropical storm Grace barrelled through two days later.

Although Prime Minister Ariel Henry was named as Moïse’s unelected successor, he has been unable to establish any authority and ease the crisis.

Haiti is still reeling from the President’s assassination and the sucker-punch delivered by the natural disasters, and – as of February 2023 – has been left without any elected government officials, leading to Haiti being described as a failed state. 

Instead, hundreds of highly organised and extremely violent criminal groups have poured into the power vacuum left by the assassination that continues to go unpunished. Today, the gangs have a stranglehold over Haiti – carrying out brutal killings, gang rapes and kidnappings to control the population.

The United Nations says gangs have control of 80 percent of the country’s capital of Port-au-Prince, home to more than two million people. Others say it is 100 percent.

Murders, rapes and kidnappings have become commonplace, with UN Secretary General António Guterres saying violence in Haiti has reached levels similar to that of a country at war.

Meanwhile, Thursday saw the deaths of two local journalists confirmed.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said in a statement that radio reporter Dumesky Kersaint died in a shooting in mid-April, while journalist Ricot Jean was found dead on Tuesday having been kidnapped on Monday.

His body was found the next day.

The UN’s special envoy for Haiti, María Isabel Salvador, said on Wednesday that in the first quarter of 2022, more than 690 criminal incidents that include killings, rapes, kidnappings and lynchings were reported. 

That number more than doubled to 1,647 in the same period this year, she said.

‘Gang violence is expanding at an alarming rate in areas previously considered relatively safe in Port-au-Prince and outside the capital,’ she told reporters, and called for the deployment of a foreign specialised force to be deployed to Haiti.

‘The Haitian people cannot wait. We need to act now,’ she said.

Vigilante killings 

With the government and the country’s small police force unable to get control of the situation, there are signs that Haitians are taking matters into their own hands, doling out violence of their own in the form of extreme vigilantism.

This violence came to a head this week. Armed with machetes, bottles, and rocks, residents in the hilly suburbs of Port-au-Prince fought back on Tuesday.

Scores of men in the Canape Vert neighbourhood of Port-au-Prince spent the night on roofs and patrolled entrances of their community – setting up makeshift checkpoints with big trucks spray-painted with the words: ‘Down with gangs.’

A day earlier, in a gruesome act of violence, an angry crowd dragged 13 suspected gangsters out of a police van and threw stones at their heads, covered them with tyres, poured gasoline over them – and burned them alive.

Six other suspected gang members in the nearby neighbourhood of Turgeau, who allegedly were shot by police, were also set on fire on Monday.

Pictures showed thick black smoke rising over the neighbourhoods as residents watching the grizzly scene covered their noses against the foul odour.

After the killings, Garry Desrosiers – spokesman for Haiti’s National Police (PNF), said he understands people’s anger and frustration over gang violence, but pleaded with people to ‘not take justice into your own hands’.

‘[The people have] been victimised. They’ve been suffering. The young women are being raped. Professionals are being kidnapped. That is not acceptable,’ he said.

Desrosiers said a limited number of police were on the scene when the killings happened, but that they couldn’t sustain the crowd, and the crowd reacted. 

He said anti-gang operations will continue to fight the criminal groups.

But local residents have become disillusioned after years of inaction from the national police, government and politicians – who in the past have used the gangs as a way to exert political control over the population.

Locals say they are determined to fight back against the gangs themselves – and are willing to go to war if that’s what it takes.

‘We are planning to fight and keep our neighbourhood clean of these savages,’ Jeff Ezequiel, a 37-year-old mechanic told reporters from the Associated Press. ‘The population is tired and frustrated.’

‘There’s nowhere to run,’ said Samuel, 25, who declined to give his last name out of fear of being killed by the gangs. ‘We have to stand and fight back.

‘If there has to be a war, I will be part of it, because authorities are not taking responsibility and are letting everyone die under their eyes.’ 

Crisis years in the making

So how did Haiti get to the point that its citizens feel duty-bound to take the fight to the gangs themselves? Haiti’s gang problems can be traced back even before Moïse’s assassination, to the turn of the 21st Century.

In 2004, the country endured a coup d’état – prompting UN intervention, and 2010 brought the earthquake that killed 250,000 people, as well as a cholera outbreak.

Then, in 2016, having never fully recovered from the quake, the island was struck by Hurricane Matthew which brought even more devastation.

With its economy in tatters, many young men began moving from hard-hit areas into cities such as Port-au-Prince in search of work to support their families.

Unable to find stable jobs, many were recruited into gangs which were steadily growing in influence and power. This began around 2018, according to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime.

President Moïse was said to have benefited from this, including allegations that he allowed G-9 – now the country’s largest coalition of gangs – impunity in the capital, provided they targeted his political opponents.

This was demonstrated in a series of attacks between 2018 to 2020 on the capital’s impoverished neighbourhoods, which saw gangs carry out the rape and murder of hundreds of civilians without any form of police intervention.

Meanwhile, Moïse had been consolidating power in the years before his assassination – gutting democratic institutions and thus leaving any successor with no leverage to crack down on the growing violence in the wake of his death, or protect its people from the escalating atrocities.

Moïse was assassinated on July 7 2021, a killing officially blamed on Colombian mercenaries, but which many suspect was ordered by his rivals.

Questions over Prime Minister Ariel Henry’s friendship with one of the chief suspects – former justice official Joseph Felix Badio – remain unanswered. Several people have been arrested in connection with the killing.

The assassination was followed closely by the magnitude 7.2 earthquake on August 14, 2021, killing more than 2,000 people and damaging over 130,000 buildings.

Rescue efforts were then hindered by Hurricane Grace on August 16, which flooded regions and threatened mudslides in areas hit by the earthquake.

Though Henry was named as Moïse’s successor (he is now both President and Prime Minister), he has not established any kind of authority and has even been unable to reach his own office because armed groups control the area around it.

With trust in the government extremely low, there are now thought to be around 200 gangs operating in Haiti including almost 100 in the capital alone, controlling everything from drugs and arms smuggling, to airports, factories and power plants.

Port-au-Prince has become a patchwork of territories whose brutal leaders – largely free of political influence – are free to operate as they please, warring over territory and revenging on each-other in an ever-escalating spiral of violence.

This has plunged Haiti – already the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country – into a dire humanitarian crisis, with hunger soaring and disease spreading.

With no one willing or able to quell the gang’s influence, there is no end in sight.

Orgy of violence

While gangs in Haiti had been allowed to act with impunity before Moïse’s assassination, the violence in the capital in particular has increased hugely since – with the gangs using fear and coercion to rule over their territories.

Hundreds of been killed, and victims have told of being forced to listen to their loved ones being raped until they pay ransoms, which can reach up to $1million. 

In one ten-day orgy of violence in Port-au-Prince back in July, gangs waged open warfare against each other in Cité Soleil – one of the capital’s slums home to 250,000 – launching raids into rival territory where they shot civilians on sight.

Gangsters stormed into people’s homes and raped any woman they found, before retreating back into their own territory – only to return again the next day.

The worst violence occurred on a single road leading out of the slum’s Nan Brooklyn district, as about 20,000 people fled.

As citizens attempted to escape down the main road, they were shot in the streets. Several children were killed, with their parents not even afforded the dignity of being allowed to give them a proper burial. Bodies were instead burned.

Across the 10 days, around 300 people were killed and at least 50 women and girls were subjected to rapes – many of which happened in front of their young children.

It is understood that the fighting broke out when the G-9 coalition launched an attempt to kill Jean Pierre Gabriel – the leader of the rival G-Pep gang.

G-Pep are rumoured to have connections with national political opposition and a major business figure, and have carved out a territory for themselves in the coastal Cité Soleil neighbourhood where they have been warring with G-9 since 2020.

G-9 members used construction equipment allegedly stolen from the government to excavate a route to Gabriel’s hideout in an attempt to kill him. 

Over the course of the 10-day conflict, heavily armed men hunting for Gabriel and his allies waged a brutal campaign of terror.

One five-year-old girl was forced to watch as her father was executed before her mother was gang-raped by four men.

Separately, a 19-year-old woman and mother-of-two was kidnapped and held for three days by a group of men who repeatedly raped her.

November 2022 saw another attack by the G-9 gang, this time on the Source-Matelas neighbourhood. 

In an interview, a 16-year-old girl told MailOnline how she was gang raped by three men whose mob marched her father and brother from their home to be murdered.

The girl – named only as Anne for her safety – said the attack happened during a massacre in her shanty town of Source-Matelas, near Port-au-Prince, on November 28 when gangs of men raided houses and raped and murdered those hiding inside. 

The massacre in Source-Matelas was sparked by the public execution of a local man called Jephté who gang leaders accused of being a police informant.

A horrific image was circulated on social media to intimidate others showing the victim seconds before his death, bound hand and foot inside a truck tyre.

A petrol canister sat beside him.

Such attacks have continued into 2023. Between February 28 and March 5, the community of Bel-Air in the capital saw armed clashes between the G-9 gang and the Bel-Air gang in which 148 people were killed or went missing.

More violence in Cité Soleil earlier in April saw nearly 70 people killed.

Despite the horrific violence, the Government and the police have failed to step in, seemingly powerless to bring an end to the attacks – with officers unable or unwilling to enter such neighbourhoods which are wholly controlled by the gangs.

Jimmy ‘Barbecue’ Cherizier and ‘state-sanctioned’ gang attacks

However, the brutal actions of the gangs are also known to have had the government’s backing in the past.

A study by Harvard University‘s law school looked at three attacks from 2018 to 2020, all during Jovenel Moïse’s term as president.

Each attack saw gangs – with the support of state actors – enter impoverished neighbourhoods in the capital and unleash death on the population.

The report focuses on a 2018 attack in La Saline, a 2019 attack in Bel-Air, and a 2020 attack in Cité Soleil – the same slum as the 10-day attack in 2022.

All three attacks were led by a man named Jimmy ‘Barbecue’ Cherizier, a former police officer who – along with several other gang leaders – today heads up the G-9 alliance, landing him on a UN Security Council’s sanctions list. 

Despite the sanctions against him, he cultivates a ‘Robin Hood’ image on social media – describing himself as a community leader who gives out cash when people are in need, clears garbage from the streets and protects people from rival gangs.

However, he is also accused of orchestrating some of Haiti’s worst recent massacres.

Cherizier has denied any connection to massacres, telling the Associated Press in 2019 that his enemies have linked him to the killings out of revenge. 

He said he got the nickname Barbecue as a child because his mother was a street vendor who sold fried chicken, not because he is accused of setting people on fire.

‘I would never massacre people in the same social class as me,’ Cherizier declared. He told the AP he takes inspiration from late dictator Francois ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier, who ruled Haiti with a bloody brutality as ‘president for life’ from 1957 to 1971.

‘I was born next door to La Saline. I live in the ghetto. I know what ghetto life is.’  

But Harvard’s study said all three amounted to crimes against humanity under international law, with 240 people being killed and 25 being raped in total. Hundreds of homes were also destroyed, displacing countless civilians.

Anti-government protests were common in each neighbourhood, the study says, with the gangsters from the G-9 coalition targeting them for this reason.

The 2018 attack in La Saline saw Cherizier and two other chiefs lead heavily armed gangs in several vehicles – including an armoured vehicle from the government’s Departmental Intervention Unit (BOID) – and carry out a 14-hour attack.

The gangsters moved through the neighbourhood, opening first with automatic weapons. The Harvard Study says that over the course of the 14-hours, 71 residents – including children and a ten-month-old child – were killed.

It said that some of the perpetrators even wore BOID uniforms and lured residents out of their homes by pretending to be part of an official police operation.

While many of the victims were found with bullet wounds, others were beheaded with machetes. At least eleven women were raped, including two gang-rapes.

Some corpses were removed from the scene of the attack to an unknown location. Others were thrown on to piles of garbage where pigs fed on them. Other bodies were dismembered and burned. 

At no point over the course of the 14-hour attack did police intervene to protect the residents of the neighbourhood, the report says, despite the Haitian National Police having several outposts within a mile of the impoverished community.

A second attack included in the report – on the Bel-Air neighbourhood in 2019 – saw the same gang led by Cherizier move in to quell anti-government protests.

When residents refused to remove barriers, 50 armed men were led into the neighbourhood on November 4 and carried out a similar attack to the first.

Residents were shot and homes were burned, killing 24 people. While BOID officers exchanged fire with gangsters at one point during the four-day attack, they did not give chase when they pulled back. No other intervention was recorded.

The third attack listed in the report once again saw Cherizier lead gang members into a neighbourhood – this time the Cité Soleil slum in 2020.

The slum is a historical stronghold of government opposition, with warring gangs controlling different areas within it, and is significant for politicians due to it being the site of large polling stations for its 250,000 inhabitants.

Violent gang fighting surged in the slum in 2020, in what the Harvard report said appeared to be a concerted effort to turn it into an area controlled by pro-government gangs.

This came as Cherizier convened a meeting of the 13 gang leaders – who would go on to form the G-9 alliance – to plan attacks on the neighbourhood.

The gangs assaulted multiple locations simultaneously, and five armoured vehicles blocked the Nan Brooklyn entrance to the deeply impoverished area of the city.

Survivors spoke of tear gas being fired indiscriminately, forcing residents to flee, before gunfire erupted from all directions.

Residents were shot, stabbed and hit with stones as they tried to escape. Some were beheaded, the Harvard report says, with bodies burned or thrown in a river.

In total, at least 145 people were killed and 98 homes were destroyed, while the G-9 was able to take control of more territory in the process.

Again, the report says there is no evidence of the PNF intervening.

The Harvard report outlines how the attacks amount to crimes against humanity, as they include murders and rapes of the civilian population, and points the finger at ‘several state actors’ who may be liable.

These include the national police and officials within the Moïse administration. 

‘There is a reasonable basis to conclude that state and non-state actors have committed crimes against humanity in Haiti during Jovenel Moïse’s presidency,’ the report states in its conclusion.

‘The brutal killings, rapes, and torture of civilians in La Saline, Bel-Air, and Cité Soleil appear to follow a widespread and systematic pattern that further state and organisational policies to control and repress communities at the forefront of government opposition.’

No charges were ever brought against the former president before his assassination.

Gang blockades fuel terminal

The government’s powerlessness was again demonstrated in September 2022 when the G-9 – opposed to President Henry – blocked the entrance to the vital Varreux fuel terminal, which supplies most of the oil products in Haiti.

Already gripped by price inflation that put food and fuel out of reach for many, and by protests that brought society to a breaking point, the blockade plunged the country into yet another, deeper crisis.

Haiti was left without gasoline and diesel, while businesses and hospitals were forced to shut their doors – just as a cholera epidemic broke out across the country after three years without a reported case.

The blockade also created widespread shortages of goods including drinking water. 

Gangsters dug trenches and littered shipping containers at the entrance to the terminal to protest an announcement by Henry that the government would cut fuel subsidies due to their high cost – sparking fury across Haiti.

The gang also demanded Henry’s resignation.

The crisis prompted Henry to call on the international community to help the Caribbean nation as its day-to-day activities were crippled.

A month into the crisis, the United Nations proposed that a ‘humanitarian corridor’ be established into Port-au-Prince to allow for deliveries of vital supplies to citizens.

The UN said at the time that the blockade on the fuel terminal ‘has led to the closure of health centres over the last weeks now, and caused the interruption of water treatment services,’ posing a problem to efforts to prevent cholera.

‘The crisis that Haiti is going through affects the population throughout the territory and the most vulnerable people are the first to suffer from the blockage.’

The blockade prompted the UN Security Council to unanimously adopt a resolution demanding an immediate end to violence and criminal activity in Haiti. 

The sanctions resolution named only a single Haitian: Cherizier.

The sanctions were the first authorised by the UN’s most powerful body since 2017 and the resolution’s approval by all 15 council nations, whose divisions have been exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, demonstrated a rare sign that council members can work together.

‘Cherizier and his G-9 gang confederation are actively blocking the free movement of fuel from the Varreux fuel terminal – the largest in Haiti,’ the resolution said.

‘His actions have directly contributed to the economic paralysis and humanitarian crisis in Haiti.’ It also said he ‘has planned, directed, or committed acts that constitute serious human rights abuses.’

The report also referenced the three attacks laid out in the Harvard report. 

While serving in the police, it said, Cherizier planned and participated in the November 2018 attack by an armed gang on the capital’s La Saline neighbourhood.

He also led armed groups ‘in coordinated, brutal attacks in Port-au-Prince neighbourhoods throughout 2018 and 2019’ and in a five-day attack in multiple neighbourhoods in the capital in 2020.

Civilians were killed and houses set on fire, the resolution said.

The fuel terminal finally reopened in November 2022 after police regained control. Gunfire was heard in the area as officers battled the gang members held up there – with neither the government or police saying if anyone was killed in the fighting.

Rumours circulated that the government had negotiated with the G-9 – something that officials in Haiti denied.

But after two months, the damage was done. The incident demonstrated to all in Haiti that the country’s powerful gangs have the power to put their boot on the country’s neck and bring it to a standstill – and plunge it deeper into crisis.

Kidnappings 

While Haiti’s gangs use rape and murder as a way to intimidate the population, one of the most prevalent crimes has become kidnapping.

Reported kidnappings soared to more than 1,200 last year, double what was reported the previous year, according to the UN – although the true figure is believed to be even higher, with many going unreported.

Kidnappings are said to be the speciality of the G-Pep gang, which is understood to have recently allied with another by the name of 400 Mawozo – Haiti’s largest stand-alone gang which reportedly has a waiting list to join.

400 Mawozo and its allies were thought to be responsible for 80 percent of abductions that took place between June 2021 to September 2021 alone.

The FBI’s Miami office says it has seen a 300 percent increase in kidnappings for the first three months of 2023 when compared to the same period last year.

Gangsters target morning rush hour as peak kidnapping time, snatching people off the streets before demanding ransom, according to the BBC.

Gedeon Jean, of Haiti’s Centre for Analysis and Research in Human Rights, said that most victims are returned alive if the ransom is paid – but are brutally treated.

She said: ‘Men are beaten and burned with materials like melted plastic. Women and girls are subject to gang rape. 

‘This situation spurs relatives to find money to pay ransom. Sometimes kidnappers call the relatives so they can hear the rape being carried out on the phone.’

In one case in 2021, reported by The Guardian, a man named Joseph was driving through Haiti’s capital when two cars suddenly skidded to a halt – one behind him and one in front of him – boxing him in.

He told the newspaper that six men with flak jackets jumped out of the vehicles pointing rifles at him, before they forced him from his car, bound and blindfolded him, and took him to a safehouse.

Under duress, he said the kidnappers forced his phone code from him and contacted his brother, setting a $1.1million ransom for his release.

Eventually, his friends and family were able to pay $15,000, and he was released from captivity. ‘They set the price so high that you are scared, so that you will pay whatever you can,’ Joseph told the newspaper.

The issue of kidnapping made global headlines that same year, when 17 foreign missionaries – 16 Americans and one Canadian – were kidnapped from a bus. Five children were also taken by the armed gang – members of 400 Mawozo.

The kidnapping sparked anger in Haiti and abroad, prompting even the FBI to get involved. The missionaries were all eventually released, but it remains unclear whether any ransom had been paid to the kidnappers.

Speaking at the time, Joseph told The Guardian: ‘There’s obviously lots of coverage because they are American, but Haitians are getting kidnapped every day. Sometimes it makes the news, but sometimes nobody cares.’

Collapsed democracy

At the start of this year – on January 10, the terms of Haiti’s last democratically elected politicians expired overnight.

Only ten remaining senators had been symbolically representing the nation’s 11 million people in recent years, because the country had failed to hold legislative elections since October 2019.

The end of their terms left Haiti without a single lawmaker in its House or Senate, and without any officially elected lawmakers in government.

The alarming development solidified what some call Henry’s de facto dictatorship, his administration nominally in charge of the country wracked by gang violence.

The Parliament building in downtown Port-au-Prince has sat deserted, with only security guards at the gate. Similar scenes have been evident outside Haiti’s non-functioning Supreme Court and electoral commission. 

‘It’s a very grim situation,’ Alex Dupuy, a Haitian-born sociologist at Wesleyan University, said at the time. He described the democratic crisis as ‘one of the worst […] that Haiti has had since the Duvalier dictatorship.’

The bloody regime of Jean-Claude ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier, who fled the country in 1986, marked the last time Haiti lacked elected officials.

Henry has promised to hold elections in 2023, saying on January 1 that the Supreme Court would be restored and a provisional electoral council tasked with setting a reasonable date for elections.

In February, he formally appointed the transition council charged with ensuring that the long-awaited elections – that were meant to be held in 2021 – go forward. ‘It is the beginning of the end of the dysfunction of our democratic institutions,’ Henry  said. 

However, many doubt the creation of the council will help the government hold elections this year, as gangs continue to fight and kill.

The ‘High Transition Council’s’ three members are Calixte Fleuridor with Haiti’s Protestant Federation, who will represent civil society; Mirlande Manigat, a law professor and former first lady and presidential candidate who will represent political parties; and Laurent Saint-Cyr, president of the Haitian Chamber of Commerce, who will represent the private sector.

The council also will be responsible for working with government officials to reform Haiti’s constitution, implement economic reforms and reduce gang violence.

But Henry stressed that elections can’t be held until Haiti becomes safer: ‘It would not be acceptable for the state to ask politicians to campaign if the state cannot guarantee their security,’ he said.

With the brutal violence continuing, when this will be is anyone’s guess. 

What next? 

This week, the UN’s special envoy to Haiti urged the immediate deployment of a specialised international force to counter the escalating gang violence, and to develop the Caribbean nation’s understaffed and ill-equipped police force.

However, the United States and Canada again showed no interest in leading a force –  and neither did any member of the UN Security Council.

Maria Isabel Salvador, who took over the UN job this month, warned that delays could lead to a spillover of insecurity in the Caribbean and Latin America. 

She cited police and UN figures to illustrate ‘the shocking increase in criminality in Haiti’ which, she said, comprise of homicides, rapes, kidnappings and lynchings.

Salvador stressed that without restoring a minimum level of security, it is impossible to move forward toward the elections Henry is supposedly pushing for.

She told reporters she was disappointed that no country has offered to lead a force since UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued an urgent appeal last October for international help at the request of Henry and the country’s Council of Ministers.

At the council meeting, neither the US – which has been criticised for previous interventions in Haiti, nor Canada – which the U.S. tried to convince to head the force, showed interest in taking the lead. 

The international community has instead opted to impose sanctions and send military equipment and other resources – interventions which many say are only making the dire situation in the country worse.

Salvador, a former Ecuadorian government official, told the council ‘we need to find innovative ways to define the force to support the Haitian National Police.’

Expanding on this idea to reporters later, the UN envoy said the international force, comprising police personnel, should help Haitian officers separate gangs and little by little restore security in the country.

She said she would like to see countries in Latin America and the Caribbean get more involved and lead the force, noting that some have past experience.

The spillover from the escalating violence is already having an impact in the neighbouring Dominican Republic and the region including Colombia, Ecuador and Peru where Haitians fleeing the country have arrived, she said, adding that increasing gang violence will worsen the impact.

‘Regional crises require regional reactions and actions,’ she stressed. Salvador lamented that this takes time, ‘and the Haitian people cannot wait.’