The President of Haiti Jovenel Moise has been assassinated by gunmen claiming to be DEA agents in a night-time raid on his home that also left his wife seriously injured, according to reports.
A group of ‘foreigners’, some of whom spoke English and Spanish, broke into Mr Moise’s home in the hills above Port-au-Prince at around 1am on Wednesday.
The 53-year-old was shot dead and the First Lady Martine, 47, remains in hospital after what Prime Minister Claude Joseph called a ‘hateful, inhumane and barbaric act.’
In footage purportedly recorded by a witness, someone with an American accent shouts into a megaphone: ‘DEA operation. Everybody stand down. DEA operation. Everybody back up, stand down.’
Gunfire then erupts in the footage which was uploaded to Instagram by someone who says they were in the Pelerin 5 neighbourhood, where the president’s house is located.
The assailants were pretending to be from the US Drugs Enforcement Agency and were ‘mercenaries,’ a high-ranking government source revealed .
Residents said they heard high-powered rounds and saw men dressed in black sprinting through the neighbourhood. There were also claims of a grenade going off and drones being deployedThe Biden administration called it a ‘tragic attack’ and said the White House was still ‘gathering information’ and ‘assessing right now’.
