T he storming of Solino began at the dead of night with dozens of gang fighters wielding Kalashnikovs and machetes marauding into one of the last bastions of safety in Haiti’s beleaguered capital, Port-au-Prince. As teenage gunmen torched houses and fired wildly into the air, residents fled on foot, carrying whatever they could take before the area was captured: children, bundles of clothing, suitcases, chairs. Felicen Dorcevah, a 45-year-old boxing coach, leapt from his bed in a neighbouring zone called Kokiyo, and watched a sea of displaced people surge into his community in search of shelter.
“Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! The bandits are coming!” Dorcevah remembers those bleary-eyed refugees warning as they ran for their lives last Friday. Six hours after the attack began, the mood in Kokiyo was still tense. A pile of wooden furniture – salvaged from a Solino home before the fighters could arrive – had been propped up against a wall on the rocky trail that winds through the area.
A cold-faced man with a machete stood guard at one of its entrances. Nearby, in an area called Christ-Roi, a barricade had been fashioned from two battered cars to stop the gang advancing further. Plumes of black smoke rose from the wreckage of Solino’s smouldering homes.
Videos began circulating on social media showing gang members from the criminal coalition known as Viv Ansanm (Live Together) parading through the community they had just invaded, chanting in creole: “Depi ou pa Viv A.