Outgunned Police cling on in critical battle with violent gangs

Nine hours and countless bullets after gunmen began bombarding Stanley's police station in Port-au-Prince, the twentysomething officer started fearing he would not make it out alive.

- Etienne Coté-Paluck and Tom Phillips

"If you don't hear from me, it's because I'm dead," he wrote on a family WhatsApp group.

The officer's sister shivered as she read her sibling's parting text and when he didn't answer her messages - rang one of his closest friends desperate for news. "I'm going out of my mind," she sobbed.

Contrary to his prediction, Stanley* did survive the recent assault on his fortress-like base but was left badly shaken. "What scared me the most was the idea of a needless death - that I might die and it would change nothing," the police officer said as heavily armed gangs continue to sow terror in Haiti's capital despite the creation of a transitional government supposed to lead the country out of its latest crisis.

Other members of Haiti's embattled national police force have not been so lucky in the face of a coordinated gang insurrection that began in late February and has plunged Port-auPrince into anarchy and forced the prime minister to resign.

Lionel Lazarre, the spokesperson for Haiti's police union Synapoha, said 17 officers had been killed and "many" wounded - mostly by gunshots - in the first four months of this year, in return for a salary of less than $100 a week.