According to police and witnesses, at least a dozen suspected gang members were stoned and burned alive by residents of a Haitian neighborhood.

The men were held with guns and killed at the time of their transfer by residents of the Canapé-Vert neighborhood in southern Port-au-Prince.

“While searching a van with armed persons on board, the police seized weapons and other equipment. On the other hand, more than a dozen persons traveling aboard this vehicle were unfortunately lynched by members of the public,” the Haitian police said in a statement.

Witnesses had revealed that gang members broke into several residential areas at dawn to rob homes and attack residents.

“This morning we were awakened by explosions. It was 03:00 in the morning, the gangs invaded us. There were shots,” he told the AFP a resident of the Turgeau district, also in the south of the capital.

“If the gangs invade us, we are going to defend ourselves, we also have our own weapons, we have machetes, we are going to take their weapons, we are not going to run away,” another neighbor added, very tense.

The United Nations had stated in a report that Port-au-Prince had reached levels “comparable to those of a country at war”.

“The Haitian people are victims of one of the worst human rights crises in decades and are in a situation of major humanitarian emergency,” Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in the report.

“The high number of deaths and the growing increase in the area controlled by armed gangs mean that insecurity in the capital has reached a level comparable to that of countries in a situation of armed conflict,” he added.