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A Kenya police officer who was patrolling with the international security force in Haiti was killed in a confrontation with gang members.
The officer is the first victim suffered by the multinational security support mission (MSS) led by Kenya.
The force was sent to Haiti in June of last year to help restore the order of the country, where gangs have taken advantage of almost the entire capital, the portable prince, as well as great stripes in rural areas.
More than 5,500 people died in violence related to gangs in Haiti in 2024 and more than one million people have fled their homes.
The multinational force commander, Gen Godfrey Otunge, said Kenya’s police officer had been injured in Artibonite, a region north of the capital.
General Otunge said that the officer, who has not been appointed, had been immediately transferred by plane to the hospital, where he died shortly after.
Jack Obombaka, the MSS spokesman, said in a statement sent to the Reuters news agency that the officer was a “fallen hero” who “was killed while fighting for the people of Haiti”, while the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Kenya said she was “broken by the loss” of the officer.
Obombaka said the officer had been fired by a member of a gang during a security operation in the city of Pont-Sondé.
He added that the multinational force “would chase these gangs to the last man standing.”
The MSS was promoted earlier this month by the arrival of 200 additional Kenya police officers, but the force is overcome and surpassed by the gangs, which continue to arm themselves with powerful weapons of the United States.
The future of the multinational force, which also has officers from Bahamas, Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala and Jamaica among its ranks, was questioned a few weeks ago when the Trump administration ordered a freezing in foreign aid programs.
The Secretary of State for the United States, Marco Rubio, approved an exemption for the funds of the United States for the National Police of MSS and Haiti, but it is not yet clear if the United States government supports that the MSS becomes In a UN Peace Maintenance Operation, which would make your financing safer.
