Haiti police commit more units to protecting earthquake aid

LES CAYES – Haiti's National Police announced Monday that it had deployed further units southbound of the superior to support assistance shipments being taken to the country's earthquake-damaged southwestern peninsula.

The announcement came 1 time aft a almighty pack person successful that country said successful a societal media video that his allied gangs would assistance successful the assistance effort.

Gang activity, including the hijacking of assistance trucks, has forced astir of the aboriginal assistance to beryllium ferried via planes and helicopters, slowing alleviation efforts.

Police spokeswoman Marie-Michelle Verrier said the constabulary commander-in-chief had decided “to fortify information successful the Great South,” arsenic the portion is known.

“Several enactment units were deployed determination connected the roads and astatine the metropolis level,” Verrier said. “The beingness of the constabulary volition beforehand the deployment of assistance convoys, but besides the extortion of catastrophe victims and amended organisation of alleviation kits by authorities authorities and representatives of the planetary community.”

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On Sunday, pack person Jimmy Cherizier, alias “Barbecue," offered a truce and promised assistance for communities successful southwestern Haiti that were shattered by the 7.2-magnitude Aug. 14 earthquake.

It remained to beryllium seen whether thing would travel from Cherizier's offer. He does not power each of the area's gangs.

The earthquake killed astatine slightest 2,207 people, according to Haiti's Civil Protection Agency. It besides says 12,268 radical were injured and astir 53,000 houses destroyed.

In a video posted connected Facebook, Cherizier addressed the hardest-hit parts of the Haiti's southwestern peninsula, saying: “We privation to archer them that the G9 Revolutionary Forces and allies, each for 1 and 1 for all, sympathize with their symptom and sorrows."

"The G9 Revolutionary Forces and allies ... volition enactment successful the alleviation by bringing them help. We invitation each compatriots to amusement solidarity with the victims by trying to stock what small determination is with them,” helium said.

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The constabulary spokeswoman said the U.S. Embassy facilitated an aerial appraisal of immoderate of the astir distant hard-hit areas.

“These areas are severely affected, but person not yet received the attraction of the authorities acrophobic due to the fact that of their isolation,” Verrier said. “This is the lawsuit of Latibolière, wherever the authorities is absent. Everything is taken attraction of by the religion and the population. In these areas, schools, shops, vocational schools, including a schoolhouse successful Coteaux, were destroyed. The commander-in-chief wants to springiness them sustained attention.”

In 1 distant area, Haitian authorities rescued 24 cultivation workers who had been trapped successful a mountaintop wood since the quake caused a landslide, Berla Severin, an authoritative with the the Civil Protection Agency, said Monday.

They had near to enactment determination aboriginal the greeting of the tremor and had not returned. By connection of mouth, authorities yet heard they were missing and mounted a hunt operation, Severin said.

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They were recovered successful the wood connected Pic Macaya and flown by chopper to a hospital.

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Associated Press writer Christopher Sherman contributed to this report.

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