Guatemala to send 150 military police officers to help fight gangs in Haiti

GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala (AP) — Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo said Tuesday at the U.N. General Assembly that his country would send 150 military police officers to help Haiti fight violent gangs.

The announcement comes as a U.N.-backed mission led by Kenyan police officers in Haiti struggles with a lack of personnel and funding, prompting the U.S. to propose replacing it with a U.N. peacekeeping mission.

Arévalo did not say when the military police would deploy.

Currently, there are nearly 400 Kenyan police officers in Haiti, along with nearly two dozen soldiers and police officers from Jamaica and two senior military officers from Belize who arrived earlier this month.

The mission aims to quell violent gangs that control 80% of the capital of Port-au-Prince and had launched coordinated attacks earlier this year targeting critical government infrastructure.

The current mission is expected to have a total of 2,500 personnel, with the Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Benin and Chad also pledging to send police and soldiers, although it wasn’t clear when that would happen.