‘The ground shook’: drone attacks help Haitian government wrest control of capital from criminal gangs

The earth beneath Jimmy Antoine’s apartment shuddered and for a split second he feared another natural disaster had struck, like the 2010 cataclysm that brought Port-au-Prince to its knees.

“The ground shook like it does during an earthquake. You tremble like everything might collapse,” said the 23-year-old trainee mechanic, recalling how he and his panicked neighbours raced out on to the street.

This time, though, the jolt had come not from deep below, but from high above: it was the detonation of a weaponized drone of the sort being used to hunt Haitian gang members who have hijacked most of the country’s capital since the start of a coordinated criminal insurrection early last year.

“People had told me about drones … but this one caught me off guard … It felt like it exploded right where I was standing,” said Antoine of the 6am attack last month near Sico, the working-class neighbourhood where he lives.

As Haiti’s beleaguered government struggles to reconquer a sprawling seaside city now almost entirely controlled by the gangs, armed drones have become a key part of their arsenal. Since the drone campaign began in March, at least 300 people have been killed by the remote-control devices and almost 400 injured, according to a local human rights group called RNDDH.

Videos of those attacks have spread rapidly on social media, painting a terrifying portrait of the drone warfare unfolding on the streets of one of the Caribbean’s largest cities.

One such video, which the Guardian identified as having taken place in a gang-run area called Fort National, shows four people – at least two of them armed – moving through an alley before being hit from above by an explosion. Blue and white smoke fills the backstreet as the men scatter.

Another clip, posted on social media by a US missionary, shows an attack on an evangelical theological seminary about 2 miles south-west of Fort National, not far from Jimmy Antoine’s home. At least one person can be seen sprinting for cover as the drone swoops towards its second-floor target and explodes. “I have fond memories of teaching in the very classroom it struck,” Luke Perkins, the president of the missionary group Crossworld, tweeted in mid-June.

Trevor Ball, a former US army explosive ordnance disposal technician, said the drones used in Port-au-Prince appeared to be first-person-view (FPV) drones.

Images of one such improvised weapon were shared on social media in March, reputedly from the aftermath of a police raid on a gang stronghold in the Lower Delmas area. The Guardian was able to identify this model of FPV drone, and found it being sold on Chinese e-commerce sites for about $200, making them relatively cheap and expendable.

Ball said it was not possible to determine from the images the exact munitions being used but it was likely the drones had either been fitted with explosives intended for commercial mining, or black powder – a homemade mix of potassium nitrate, charcoal and sulfur that is used in fireworks. “These tactics are used in other parts of the world, especially in the Ukraine-Russia war. Using first-person-view drones to deliver explosive devices has become extremely common there, and has been seen in other conflicts as well,” Bell added.

One other video that surfaced earlier this year showed a targeted drone strike on a moving car less than 500 metres (547 yards) away from the compound believed to belong to Johnson André, a notorious gang boss known by the nickname “Izo” whose gang is called 5 Segonn (“Five Seconds”). The car was driving near waterways reportedly used for drug and gun trafficking by the gangs.