PORT AU PRINCE, Haiti (CMC) – Members of the ‘Kraze Baryè’ gang used heavy machinery to completely demolish the Pernier sub-police station in Haiti that had been abandoned since last Thursday when police officers protested the killings of six of their colleagues from the Liancourt Police Station by another criminal gang.

Photos show the police station is now a pile of rubble as the gang destroyed the building over the weekend.

Media reports said that the police station had been looted and partly burned down last Thursday by unidentified individuals.

The reports said that the show of force by the ‘Kraze Baryè’ gang comes as a challenge to the police, and coincides with the day the National Police of Haiti (PNH) announced the launch of Operation “Tornado 1”.

Prime Minister Dr Ariel Henry has called for the international community to participate in a specialised multinational force to help the Haitian security forces to fight against the proliferation of organised crime, the illicit trafficking of arms and ammunition, and eradicate the gangs that have held the country hostage.

Last Tuesday, at the UN Security Council, Helen La Lime, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative in Haiti, said the country’s protracted political and humanitarian crises, marked by spiking levels of gang-related violence and a badly struggling national police force, were reversing crucial security and development strides made since the devastating 2010 earthquake.

La Lime said that more than 2,100 murders and an estimated 1,300 kidnappings were reported last year and gang violence overall reached levels not seen in decades.

She said turf wars involving two gang coalitions, namely the G9 coalition and G-Pep, reached unprecedented levels in several neighbourhoods of Cité Soleil.

Meanwhile, Colombia and El Salvador have both indicated a willingness to re-open diplomatic missions in the French-speaking Caribbean Community (Caricom) country.

Haiti’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Jean Victor Geneus, held talks with his Colombian counterpart, Álvaro Leyva on the sidelines of the VII Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in Argentina, last week.

At the end of this bilateral meeting, Leyva announced that after 20 years, Colombia will reopen its Consulate in Haiti. He said a consul will be appointed in Haiti in the coming days.

The Vice-President of El Salvador Félix Ulloa has since announced that “El Salvador will help Haiti, by setting up a cooperation office in Port-au-Prince, with the objective of reducing high crime rates”.

As a result, El Salvador will make available its experience on crime reduction attributed to its territorial control plan and the measure of the emergency regime, implemented to “combat” gangs.