Kenya suffered its first casualty after one police officer was on Sunday February 23 shot and killed in a clash with criminal gangs in Seguin in Pont-Sonde, Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
The Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS) in Haiti commander Godfrey Otunge said the victim was among a team that had embarked on a mission to crush a gang operating in the area when he was shot and seriously injured.
He was airlifted to Level Two Aspen hospital where he succumbed to the injuries.
His colleagues responded and killed dozens of the criminals, officials said.
It marked the first casualty on the Kenyan team since they arrived there on June 25, 2024 to help the Caribbean nation contain criminal gangs.
Kenya has about 800 officers of the 1,000 needed.
Officials explained that over the past week, Kenyan police officers have been conducting continuous security operations in Artibonite, successfully neutralizing several gangs.
In response, the residents of Seguin in Pont-Sonde began calling for similar action in their area.
“Hearing their pleas, the brave Kenyan police officers answered the call.
This is the price our courageous officer paid—he was killed while fighting for the people of Haiti. His fellow officers, unwilling to accept the loss, pursued the gang member responsible and immediately neutralized him,” spokesman Jack Ombaka explained.
The El Salvador Causality Evacuation (CASEVAC) team who responded in a record time and the doctors at the hospital did all they could do to save the officer’s life in vain.
The Kenyan team is part of the group of a UN-approved international force that will be made up of 2,500 officers from various countries.
There are however concerns that even if the team manages to dislodge the bandits from this stronghold, the absence of an immediate and lasting occupation by the police or the army will allow them to return quickly.
But even 1,000 security personnel or the mission’s targeted goal of 2,500 is insufficient, security experts say.
There are around nearly 900 police and troops from Kenya, El Salvador, Jamaica, Guatemala and Belize.
Chronic instability, dictatorships and natural disasters in recent decades have left Haiti the poorest nation in the Americas.
Last year, Haiti saw a record number of neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas fall to armed gangs, despite the presence of foreign forces and a new U.S.-backed transition government.
As the gangs took over neighborhoods and carried out some of the worst massacres in recent memory, they also deepened the country’s humanitarian crisis as tens of thousands more Haitians were forced to flee their homes.
The United Nations said more than 5,600 people were killed by gang violence last year, an increase over the previous two years, and over 1 million Haitians are now displaced.
The international security mission, while approved by the U.N. Security Council, is not a United Nations operation and currently relies on voluntary contributions.
Two weeks ago, the US delivered at least 600 assorted guns to the mission boosting ongoing operations against criminal gangs in the Caribbean nation.
The donation made on February 10 also included nine pickups, two trucks, two excavators, two armored loaders and tens of bullets.
