'A civil war' Gangs step up assault on capital

Armed fighters advance into neighbourhoods at the heart of Port-au-Prince as authorities try to restore order

- Tom Phillips and Etienne

The storming of Solino began in the dead of night with dozens of gang fighters marauding into one of the last bastions of safety in Haiti's beleaguered capital, Port-au-Prince.

As teenage gunmen torched houses and fired into the air, residents fled on foot, carrying whatever they could take before the area was captured: children, bundles of clothing, suitcases, chairs.

Six hours after the attack began, the mood in neighbouring Kokiyo was still tense. A pile of wooden furniture - salvaged from a Solino home before the fighters could arrive - had been propped up against a wall on the rocky trail that winds through the area. A man with a machete stood guard at one of its entrances.

In nearby Christ Roi, a barricade had been fashioned from two battered cars to stop the gang advancing further. Plumes of smoke rose from the wreckage of Solino's smouldering homes. Videos began circulating on social media showing gang members from the criminal coalition known as Viv Ansanm (Live Together) parading through the community they had just invaded.

"I feel powerless," lamented Felicen Dorcevah, as he stood inside his cramped shack at the heart of a maze of sewage-streaked alleyways inside Kokiyo. The former boxing champion moved here 14 years earlier after being forced from another home when one of the worst earthquakes in history reduced Port-au-Prince to rubble in January 2010.