Guatemala to send 150 military police to help fight gangs in Haiti - Los Angeles Times
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Guatemala to send 150 military police officers to help fight gangs in Haiti

President of Guatemala speaks to the United Nations General Assembly behind a podium with a UN logo
The president of Guatemala, Cesar Bernardo Arevalo de Leon, speaks to the United Nations General Assembly during the Summit of the Future on Sunday at the U.N. headquarters.
(Frank Franklin II / Associated Press)
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Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo said Tuesday at the U.N. General Assembly that his country would send 150 military police officers to help Haiti fight violent gangs.

The announcement comes as a U.N.-backed mission led by Kenyan police officers in Haiti struggles with a lack of personnel and funding, prompting the U.S. to propose replacing it with a U.N. peacekeeping mission.

Arévalo did not say when the military police would deploy.

A second contingent of 200 police officers from Kenya arrived in Haiti to bolster a U.N.-backed mission led by the East African country.

July 16, 2024

Currently, there are nearly 400 Kenyan police officers in Haiti, along with nearly two dozen soldiers and police officers from Jamaica and two senior military officers from Belize who arrived earlier this month.

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The mission aims to quell violent gangs that control 80% of the capital of Port-au-Prince and had launched coordinated attacks earlier this year targeting critical government infrastructure.

The current mission is expected to have a total of 2,500 personnel, with the Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Benin and Chad also pledging to send police and soldiers, although it wasn’t clear when that would happen.

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