Overview:
La Chapelle, a commune in Haiti’s Artibonite Division, is the newest city falling below the management of violent armed gangs. The “Talibans” gang from Canaan, a neighborhood within the metropolitan space of Port-au-Prince, seized management of the as soon as peaceable city throughout a coordinated early-morning assault on Sunday, June 22. The bandits set the native police station ablaze and erected barricades to dam any police response.
Editor’s Be aware: This can be a growing story. It is going to be up to date as extra particulars change into accessible.
PORT-AU-PRINCE — La Chapelle, a commune in Haiti’s decrease Artibonite Division, fell to gang management early Sunday morning, June 22, after armed males from the “Talibans” group primarily based in Canaan—a neighborhood in Port-au-Prince—launched a pre-dawn assault. The assailants set hearth to the police station, together with models of the Anti-Gang Tactical Unit (UTAG), forcing officers to retreat.
The operation started round 5 a.m. and was carried out by the affiliate of Viv Ansanm, a broader gang coalition led by infamous chief Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier, in response to the city mayor, Robinson Dieuseul Fonrose. He stated the assailants rapidly sealed all entry and exit factors to dam police reinforcements.
“They now management your complete commune,” Fonrose stated on Radio Télévision Caraïbes. “These nonetheless inside are unable to go away, because the gunmen develop stronger by the hour.”
Authorities had acquired warnings as early as June 19 that La Chapelle was a goal. Nonetheless, no proactive measures had been taken. Whereas no fatalities have been reported but, a number of properties and the police station had been destroyed. By the point reinforcements arrived, the gang had already taken full management.
Fonrose warned that close by communes stay in danger, particularly these with police presence. He believes the UTAG’s deployment in La Chapelle could have triggered the assault, as gangs search to get rid of any remaining regulation enforcement resistance.
“These males arrived in overwhelming numbers, closely armed,” he stated, urging assist for susceptible residents—particularly the aged—nonetheless trapped contained in the city.
Regardless of the escalating disaster, nationwide authorities, together with the Transitional Presidential Council (CPT), the Prime Minister’s Workplace and regulation enforcement establishments, have but to reply publicly. La Chapelle turns into the newest space added to the rising record of greater than 28 zones below gang management throughout Haiti in 2025.
The assault follows unrest in close by Mirebalais, the place residents toppled the principle infrastructure supporting the Péligre hydroelectric plant, reducing the facility distribution to Port-au-Prince. The act was a part of a protest over the federal government’s failure to handle gang takeovers and unmet guarantees to revive safety.
In La Chapelle, as in Mirebalais, Terrier-Rouge, Saut-d’Eau and different communes, gunmen have fortified the city with makeshift barricades, burned equipment and now roam overtly in public areas.
Communes throughout Haiti are experiencing comparable upheaval. Kenscoff, for instance, introduced countermeasures, together with systematic searches at key checkpoints, the deployment of surveillance drones and shutting off again routes utilized by armed teams to penetrate the realm.
In the meantime, in an unique media briefing, Fritz Alphonse Jean, the president of the CPT, denounced state dysfunction and corruption as key obstacles to preventing the violence. He confirmed that the federal government had employed a personal international safety agency—not Blackwater as first reported on the finish of Might by The New York Occasions—to help the Haitian Nationwide Police (PNH).
Jean declined to share specifics of the settlement however acknowledged the nationwide police alone can not fight the disaster. He known as for higher consciousness inside the authorities.
“I get the impression that these inside state establishments don’t grasp the extent of the nation’s vulnerability,” he stated.
As gang violence continues to unfold unchecked, many Haitians are both fleeing or organizing grassroots resistance—filling the void left by an absent state.