AROUND 150 military police officers from Central America arrived in Haiti on Saturday to reinforce a US-backed intervention in the Caribbean country.

A deployment of around 75 security officers, mostly from Guatemala, arrived on Saturday at Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince and was met by Kenyan commander Godfrey Otunge.

The intervention force has for months been fighting a losing battle to quell gang violence in Haiti.

“The gangs have only two choices: surrender, lay down their weapons and face justice, or face us in the field,” Mr Otunge said in remarks at a welcoming ceremony. 

He added that with the additional Guatemalan and El Salvador forces “the gangs will have nowhere to hide. We will root them out of their enclave.”

A similar-sized contingent arrived on Friday from Central America aboard a US Air Force aircraft, being greeted by top Haitian officials and US ambassador Dennis Hankins.

Co-ordinated gang attacks on prisons, police stations and the main international airport have intensified in Haiti since the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise. Gangs are estimated to control about 85 per cent of the capital.

On Christmas Eve gunmen opened fire on a crowd that gathered for the reopening of Haiti’s biggest public hospital, which was closed after gangs rampaged through it earlier in the year. 

Two journalists covering the event and a police officer were killed.

The US is the intervention force’s main financial contributor to the tune of around $300 million (£239m) a year.

Washington has made repeated attempts to get the United Nations security council to agree to turn the intervention into a UN peacekeeping mission.

But China and Russia refused to discuss draft US resolutions on the issue.

China’s deputy UN ambassador Geng Shuang described the proposal in September as “nothing more than putting peacekeepers into the front line of the battles with gangs.”