A group of school children in their smart uniforms skip past us, overseen by their mums and dads.

In front of us, the highway is empty of all cars except for two armoured police vehicles slowly making their way up a hill.

The children and their parents are on “Airport Road”, which leads into the centre of Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. The airport is a few miles away to the north.

The parents are leading the children to an intersection where they will turn right towards their homes.

Send us your questions for live Haiti Q&A with Stuart Ramsay

Everything beyond that intersection is gang territory, and nobody ventures past it but the police, who appear to be probing the gangs’ defences.

This part of the Airport Road, beyond the intersection and stretching for miles, is an area controlled by the gangster Jimmy Cherizier, known here and abroad as “Barbecue”.

The security forces are desperate to capture Barbecue, himself a former policeman, and to dismantle his gang.

As the families near the intersection, automatic gunfire bursts from the turret of one of the armoured police vehicles. Instantly the children and their parents run for safety, hugging a wall – they know what is about to happen.

Within seconds the police are being attacked with volleys of machine gun fire. We watch, holding our breaths, and thankfully all the children make it round the corner to the relative safety of a side street.

They live on the edge of what’s called the “red zone” where the gangs control the streets.

Security forces want to take it back.

The first armoured police vehicle makes it into Barbecue’s territory unscathed, but the second vehicle is hit.

One of its tyres is punctured, so they have no choice but to turn back.

The firing intensifies as the police vehicle makes its way down the hill, and we can hear the crack of bullets as the gangs target the police.

My team and I are travelling in two separate armoured 4x4s. The police are the targets, and we are filming their exchanges with gang members hidden up the hill and in side streets, firing from multiple positions.

As the police vehicle nears the intersection once again, it comes under sustained fire.

At this point the streets and the intersection are completely empty of people and traffic, anyone in the vicinity has taken cover.

A stray round passes uncomfortably close by our team still outside the vehicles, so we decide it’s time to go, and reverse as the armoured police vehicle loses its tyre, rolling forward on its rim.

Getting out would be suicidal for the police. The vehicle limps towards another crossroads to get away from the firing.

This, I’m told, is just an ordinary day in Port-au-Prince.

Nobody can fully agree on a number, but by most estimates, the gangs control around 90% of Port-au-Prince now. People don’t venture into their areas, and cars turn away from the boundaries to avoid being hit by sniper fire from inside or being caught in the crossfire.

Hundreds of thousands of Haitians have lost their homes, and many now find themselves in heaving makeshift displacement camps. They huddle for protection, but in reality there really isn’t much on offer.

In a narrow alleyway in a camp set up in the grounds of a church, I meet Barbara Gashiwi, a new mum. She gave birth to her daughter Jenna a month ago, beneath the plastic sheets where she still sits.

Barbara was forced out of her home by the gangs days before she was due to give birth.

“They pulled guns on us and told us to give up the house, after that we ran outside on to the street and took off,” she told me.

She says she doesn’t think she will ever go back to her home again. Very few of the 10,500 people living in this one displacement camp believe they will ever go home.

Follow The World

Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday

Tap to follow

A year ago, we visited displaced Haitians living inside the government’s communication ministry.

At the time we walked in off the street, but this time we could barely move for the crowds – the forecourt is now a camp too, and the difference is stark.

The government has abandoned this and other ministries, moving higher up to safer ground, leaving whole communities on their own.

The gangs’ lawless, and often murderous, activity means that the roughly 10% of Port-au-Prince still free is packed with people and traffic.

Just a few districts in Port-au-Prince are left, and they’re completed surrounded, leaving the people who live in this city squeezed into the only places that haven’t fallen.

It’s hard to describe the claustrophobia and tension that pervades life here.

And with everything else happening in the world right now, the people of Haiti feel they’ve been abandoned, and are condemned to live their lives under the rule of the gun.

Stuart Ramsay reports from Haiti with camera operator Toby Nash, senior foreign producer Dominique Van Heerden, and producers Brunelie Joseph and David Montgomery.

Romania and its judiciary now face a difficult choice

It’s three days since I asked George Simion if he would accept the result if he lost, and he said “yes” with the sort of shrug that suggested it was a stupid question.

Turns out it was quite a good question, after all.

Because Mr Simion has just stated that he won’t accept the result, after all.

He’s alleging the French government tried to limit the amount of his campaign material that appeared on social media, echoing an accusation made by Pavel Durov, the Russian founder of the messaging app Telegram.

Durov claimed “a Western government” had asked his company “to silence conservative voices in Romania” ahead of the election.

He added an emoji of a baguette on to his message as a not-too-subtle clue to the government he meant.

Durov is enmeshed in a legal row with French authorities. He was arrested by French police in August 2024, facing the allegation that a lack of content moderation on Telegram had allowed criminal activities.

He was forced to remain in France until two months ago, when he was allowed to return to his home in Dubai.

Simion has now told his followers to only use Telegram, adopting that to be their only form of communication.

What this means for Romania is more turmoil and more rancour.

Nicusor Dan is due to be installed as president just at a time when Simion is encouraging his millions of supporters to deluge the country’s highest court with demands that the election be run again.

But the country, and its judiciary, face a difficult choice.

They annulled the December election on the basis of evidence that even Georgescu’s opponents thought was questionable.

Can they really now ignore Simion’s claims and press on regardless without accusations that they favour the mainstream politicians over the populists?

And that, of course, would hugely fuel Simion’s long-running accusation that the establishment is out to thwart him.

It is, in short, a bit of a mess.

The UK and EU have placed fresh sanctions on Russia as the Kremlin refused to put a timeline on ceasefire talks with Ukraine.

The UK’s Foreign Office said a total of 100 further sanctions will target Russia’s military, energy and financial sectors.

The new measures will target the supply chains of Russian weapons systems, including Iskander missiles, Kremlin-funded information operations, financial institutions that help Russia evade sanctions and ships in the Kremlin’s “shadow fleet” of oil tankers.

Ukraine war latest: Trump has ‘red line’ for peace talks

The Foreign Office said Vladimir Putin had repeatedly fired Iskander missiles into crowded civilian areas “with a callous disregard for life”, including on 13 April in Sumy when 34 civilians, including children, were killed as some headed to Palm Sunday services.

Similarly, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said an 18th package of EU sanctions against Russia is already being worked on.

“It’s time to intensify the pressure on Russia to bring about the ceasefire,” she said on X, after a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

These new sanctions are being imposed to ratchet up pressure on Mr Putin after Russia fired 273 drones at Ukrainian cities on Saturday, the biggest drone attack since it invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

Foreign Secretary David Lammy said: “Putin’s latest strikes once again show his true colours as a warmonger.

“We urge him to agree a full, unconditional ceasefire right away so there can be talks on a just and lasting peace.

“We have been clear that delaying peace efforts will only redouble our resolve to help Ukraine to defend itself and use our sanctions to restrict Putin’s war machine.”

Following Donald Trump’s two-hour call with Mr Putin on Monday, the US president said Russia and Ukraine will immediately start negotiations for a ceasefire; however, the Kremlin gave no timeline despite Mr Zelenskyy agreeing to one months ago.

The call prompted the UK and EU’s new sanctions.

Read more:
Is Trump walking away from peace in Ukraine?
Russia bans Amnesty International as an ‘undesirable organistion’

New British sanctions have also been placed on 14 more members of the Social Design Agency (SDA), which carries out Kremlin-funded information operations to undermine sovereignty, democracy and the rule of law in Ukraine and across the world.

The UK had previously sanctioned the SDA and several of its leaders last year, but all levels of the organisation are now being targeted.

Another 46 financial institutions that help Russia evade sanctions have also been targeted.

Sanctions have also been placed on a further 18 ships, following 110 earlier this month, in Russia’s “shadow fleet”, which carry Russian oil under different flags (often Liberian) to continue shipping oil around the world despite sanctions that have placed a price cap on Russian oil.

👉 Follow Trump100 on your podcast app 👈

John Ormerod, a British national who procured ships for Russia’s shadow fleet has been sanctioned, and two Russian captains of shadow fleet tankers.

The UK and Western allies are looking to lower the price cap of Russian crude oil from $60 a barrel to prevent profits from being used to fund the war.

The Foreign Office said UK and other Western sanctions have severely hit Russia’s economy, with its GDP shrinking in the first quarter of the year and the non-defence economy in recession for some time.

It said security and defence spending now accounts for more than 40% of Russia’s federal budget, with Mr Putin raising taxes and cutting social spending to continue the war.