'This is a civil war' Gangs advance on wealthy areas of Haitian capital

Gangs advance on wealthy areas of Haitian capital

- Tom Phillips Etienne Côté-Paluck

The storming of Solino began in 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 boxing coach, leapt from his bed in a neighboring 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!" he 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. Wooden furniture salvaged from a Solino home 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 smoldering homes. Videos began circulating on social media showing members of the criminal coalition known as Viv Ansanm (Live Together) parading through the community they had just invaded, chanting in Creole: "Depi ou pa Viv Ansanm, nap boule w an sann" - "If you're not with Viv Ansanm, we are going to burn you to ashes".

"I feel powerless," lamented Dorcevah, 45, as he stood inside his cramped shack at the heart of a maze of sewage-streaked alleyways in Kokiyo. The former boxing champion moved here 14 years ago after being forced from another home when one of the worst earthquakes in history reduced Port-au-Prince to rubble and killed tens of thousands of people.