Kenya Police Contingent Lands in Port-au-Prince, Haiti
By THE DISPATCH.DIITAL CORRESPONDENT and AGENCIES
The first batch of 400 Kenya police officers arrived in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince on Tuesday as part of a new security mission, disembarking a Kenya Airways plane with weapons in hand, according to a Reuters witness.
The officers are expected to lead a mission to tackle raging gangland violence convulsing the Caribbean nation, which has suffered a prolonged period of instability amid a severe humanitarian crisis.
The officers streamed out of the plane at the capital’s airport as a small crowd, mostly airport personnel, greeted them on the tarmac.
They had left Nairobi on Monday night aboard a Kenya Airways flight and were seen off by Interior Principal Secretary Raymond Omollo and Deputy Inspector General of Police (Administration Police Service) Noor Gabow, who will coordinate the United Nations Mission in Haiti, a multi-national force that will ultimately comprise of 1,000 Kenyan officers drawn from the General Service Unit and the Administration Police Service.
The AP news agency reported that it wasn’t immediately known what the Kenyans’ first assignment would be, but they will face violent gangs that control 80% of Haiti’s capital and have left more than 580,000 people across the country homeless as they pillage neighborhoods in their quest to control more territory.
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