Haiti is under a state of emergency and nighttime curfew amid a surge of violence, after armed gangs attacked the two largest prisons and freed scores of inmates on the weekend.
The Haitian government declared the 72-hour state of emergency on Sunday evening and imposed a curfew from 6 pm to 5 am in an effort to restore order and to take appropriate measures to regain control of the situation.
The government cited the deterioration in security, particularly in the metropolitan area of ??Port-au-Prince, characterized by increasingly violent criminal acts perpetrated by armed gangs, causing massive population displacements and consisting of kidnappings and assassinations of peaceful citizens, violence against women and children, ransacking and theft of public and private property.