Pandemonium in Port-au-Prince: International connectivity back after almost 4,000 inmates escape Haiti prisons

International connectivity to Haiti has been restored. It was disrupted on Sunday because of violent clashes in the capital that damaged communications infrastructure.

As per Maarten Boute, chairperson of Digicel, one of the main telecoms providers in Haiti, the company’s field teams have fully restored the connection on Sunday afternoon.

This comes as several thousand inmates escaped from Haiti’s main prison in the capital, Port-au-Prince, after an overnight violent attack. As per reports, the attack on Saturday (March 2) led to the death of at least a dozen people. Hundreds of inmates may have escaped from another facility known as Croix des Bouquets after a similar attack. However, the numbers are not clear yet.

Ongoing violence in Haiti

Pierre Esperance of the National Network for the Defense of Human Rights, an NGO, reports that following the overnight attack, only about 100 of the National Penitentiary’s roughly 3,800 inmates remained inside.

In conversation with AFP, he mentioned seeing numerous prisoners’ bodies and wounded individuals in the aftermath of the attack.