A new front for drone warfare has opened a two-hour flight south of Miami. Haiti’s besieged government is using drones strapped with explosives to strike gangs that have turned the nation’s capital into a hellscape.
The government is relying on lightweight drones carrying rudimentary bombs to reach beyond the 10th of Port-au-Prince it controls. But the hundreds of people killed in those explosions since February don’t include any gang leaders, human-rights organizations said. “It’s showing how weak the government forces are,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a scholar on conflict at the Brookings Institution. “They are desperate.” The administration of Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, who took over as acting leader in November, didn’t respond to requests for comment. Fils-Aimé created a task force to operate the drone strikes as part of escalating action against gangs it considers terrorist entities, people close to Haiti’s leadership said.
“The state will not give in to terror. Victory against the gangs is coming. Haiti will take back control of its destiny,” Fils-Aimé’s office said on March 1 when the task force began a new offensive. Sounds of explosions and gunfire have become commonplace as police, armed civilian groups and gangs fight across the city. Rights groups in April documented detonations around a neighborhood where police are fighting to keep control of the last escape route for civilians fleeing Port-au-Prince.

Full report : Haiti’s government has started using explosive drones against the armed gangs.