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For us, every day in Port-au-Prince starts with a situation report on the latest outbreak of fighting in this beleaguered capital city.

It’s often near the presidential palace and government buildings in the downtown district, but in truth it can be anywhere – nowhere feels safe.

Every day as we drive around town we see bodies on the road. Cars, motorcycles and buses don’t stop, and people step around the dead.

Sometimes the bodies are covered with sheets, sometimes they are set on fire, and sometimes they just lie there in the blistering heat.

Families often don’t retrieve their loved ones because they don’t have the money to pay for a burial.

Their hope is that passing NGOs or government workers will take the bodies away.

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Bodies left on the streets

Nobody knows the reasons for mystery murders

On one street a man has been shot, with a tyre placed in front of his body so vehicles don’t drive over him.

On another street, a man and a woman have been killed. They were riding a motorcycle when they were shot. The woman was still holding a bag of rice in her hand.

And on a street just up the road from that scene, I watched a mother walking with her young daughter. They passed a charred and still-burning body of a woman killed overnight.

They didn’t pay much attention to the scene that would shock anybody anywhere else. But not in Port-au-Prince.

Nobody knows why these murders happened.

Military near airpor

A city where quiet means danger

Society is inured to the horror of life here, where the bodies are just the grisly manifestation of the shooting one can hear echoing around the city every day.

Driving in Port-au-Prince is sometimes challenging. Motorcycles, tuk-tuks, cars and lorries jostle for position on decrepit, narrow roads.

When the roads go quiet, you know instinctively you are in a dangerous place.

The main road to the international airport is dangerous and tense – few cars travel on it anymore.

The airport is guarded by the military. It’s the only place they are visible. We drive up to the main entrance past soldiers and their vehicles.

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The military is guarding the airport – which is deserted

The airport is completely closed. There is not a plane in sight, the control tower is shut, and the airport zone in general is deadly quiet.

The overwhelming sense you get here is of a capital city not only cut off from the rest of the country, but cut off from the rest of the world.

It’s a siege from within if you like, and everyone is a prisoner.

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Vigilantes fighting back night and day

Neighbourhood after neighbourhood is barricaded off with vehicles, sandbags, concrete blocks, old fridges, barbed wire, tree trunks… they use whatever they can find.

Some of the areas are gang territories and others are communities trying to protect themselves.

Through the barricades, we were given permission to enter a place called Solino, a community of 10,000 people that has been attacked by two separate gangs for over a year now. They’re trying to take it over.

At least 80% of Port-au-Prince has fallen to the gangs – but it’s not happening in this neighbourhood because Solino is protected by armed vigilantes and off-duty police officers who live here and fight them together.

We’re told to wear our body armour and helmets because the fighting can start at any moment.

Solino
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The gangs consider Solino a gateway to areas they have yet to take

An off-duty police officer guides us on foot towards another barricade that protects neighbourhoods. This barricade is piled high with sandbags. On the other side is the territory of two different gangs.

It is that close.

The homes and the streets on the frontline are deserted, and although the homes burnt out by the gangs have been taken back, they’re uninhabitable – it’s simply too dangerous.

Regular attacks kill men on both sides, but this vigilante group is holding on in this turf war.

They believe they will win – or rather, they hope they will.

Read more:
The families trapped in Haiti’s violent capital with nowhere to go

Off-duty policeman with gun and vigilantes patrol Solino
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An off-duty policeman (left) patrols Solino with other men

Anti-gang graffiti in Solino
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Anti-gang graffiti is an act of defiance

None of the men I speak to want to show their faces or give their names, though they are happy to talk.

Wearing a black balaclava to cover up, one of the civilians who has joined the group to protect the community told me they’re doing everything they can to protect their community.

“This may look like a ghetto to you, but it’s not. There are engineers and doctors who live here, it’s a nice area,” he said.

He feels passionately that they can and must hold the gangs back, not least because Solino is considered by the gangs to be a gateway to the areas of Port-au-Prince they haven’t yet taken.

“It’s us citizens along with the police officers who are controlling this area, without them we wouldn’t have what you see here today in Solino, and we continue to fight tooth and nail, night and day, to protect the area,” he said.

“We have families who have left the area, but those who remain give their heart and soul for the freedom of the neighbourhood, and the freedom of this country.”

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Climate-vulnerable islands storm out of COP29 negotiation room in row over funding

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Climate-vulnerable islands storm out of COP29 negotiation room in row over funding

Representatives of dozens of climate vulnerable islands and African nations have stormed out of high-stakes negotiations over a climate funding goal.

Patience is wearing thin and negotiations have boiled over at the COP29 climate talks in Azerbaijan, which were due to finish yesterday but are now well into overtime.

After two weeks of talks, the more than 190 countries gathered in the capital Baku are still trying to agree a new financial settlement to channel money to poorer countries to both curb and adapt to climate change.

Talks have now run well into overtime at COP29, but a deal now feels much more precarious.

The least developed countries like Mozambique and low-lying island nations like Samoa say their calls for a portion of the fund to be allocated to them have been ignored.

Samoa’s minister of natural resources and environment Toeolesulusulu Cedric Schuster is one of the representatives who walked out.

“We are here to negotiate but we have walked out… at the moment we don’t feel we are being heard in there,” he said on behalf of more than 40 small island and developing states, whose shorelines are being lost to rising sea levels.

More on Cop29

Shortly after he made a veiled threat of leaving COP29 altogether, saying: “We want nothing more than to continue to engage, but the process must be INCLUSIVE.

“If this cannot be the case, it becomes very difficult for us to continue our involvement here at COP29.”

Evans Njewa, who chairs a group of more than 40 least developed countries, said the current deal is “unacceptable for us. We need to speak to other developing countries and decide what to do.”

The last official draft on Friday pledged $250bn a year annually by 2035.

This is more than double the previous goal of $100bn set 15 years ago, but nowhere near the annual $1.3trn that experts say is needed.

Sky News understands some developed countries like the UK were this morning willing to bump up the goal to $300bn.

Developing countries are angry not just about the finance negotiations, but also on how to make progress on a pledge from last year to “transition away from fossil fuels”.

A group of oil and producing countries, spearheaded by Saudi Arabia, have tried to dilute that language, while the UK and island state are among those that have fought to keep it in.

Mr Schuster said all things being negotiated contain a “deplorable lack of substance”.

He added: “We need to see progress and follow up on the transition away from fossil fuels that we agreed last year. We have been asked to forget all about that at this COP, as though we are not in a critical decade and as though the 1.5C limit is not in peril.”

“We need to be shown the regard which our dire circumstances necessitate.”

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At least 11 killed in Israeli strikes on central Beirut, Lebanese authorities say

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At least 11 killed in Israeli strikes on central Beirut, Lebanese authorities say

At least 11 people have been killed and 63 injured in an Israeli strike on central Beirut, Lebanese authorities have said.

Lebanon‘s health ministry said the death toll could rise as emergency workers dug through the rubble looking for survivors. DNA tests are being used to identify the victims, the ministry added.

State-run National News Agency (NNA) said the attack “completely destroyed” an eight-storey residential building in the Basta neighbourhood early on Saturday.

Footage broadcast by Lebanon’s Al Jadeed station also showed at least one destroyed building and several others badly damaged around it.

The central Basta neighbourhood in Beirut, where four people were killed in an Israeli airstrike
Image:
The central Basta neighbourhood in Beirut, where four people were killed in an Israeli airstrike

Map of Lebanon and Israel

The Israeli military did not warn residents to evacuate before the attack – the fourth targeting the centre this week.

At least four bombs were dropped in the attack, security sources told Reuters news agency.

The blasts happened at about 4am (2am UK time).

A seperate drone strike in the southern port cuty of Tyre this morning killed one person and injured another, according to the NNA.

The blasts came after a day of bombardment of Beirut’s southern suburbs and Tyre. The Israeli military had issued evacuation notices prior to those strikes.

Pic: AP
Image:
Pic: AP

Israel has killed several Hezbollah leaders in air strikes on the capital’s southern suburbs.

Heavy fighting between Israel and Hezbollah is ongoing in southern Lebanon, as Israeli forces push deeper into the country since launching a major offensive in September.

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‘Dozens’ of Palestinians killed in Israeli airstrike

US envoy Amos Hochstein was in the region this week to try to end more than 13 months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, ignited last October by the war in Gaza.

Mr Hochstein indicated progress had been made after meetings in Beirut on Tuesday and Wednesday, before going to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defence minister Israel Katz.

According to the Lebanese health ministry, Israel has killed more than 3,500 people in Lebanon and wounded more than 15,000.

It has displaced about 1.2 million people – a quarter of Lebanon’s population – while Israel says about 90 soldiers and nearly 50 civilians have been killed in northern Israel.

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Vladimir Putin vows to increase production of Russia’s ‘unstoppable’ missile – as NATO and Ukraine to hold talks

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Vladimir Putin vows to increase production of Russia's 'unstoppable' missile - as NATO and Ukraine to hold talks

President Vladimir Putin has said Russia will ramp up the production of a new, hypersonic ballistic missile.

In a nationally-televised speech, Mr Putin said the intermediate-range Oreshnik missile was used in an attack on Ukrainian city Dnipro in retaliation for Ukraine’s use of US and British missiles capable of striking deeper into Russian territory.

Referring to the Oreshnik, the Russian president said: “No one in the world has such weapons.

“Sooner or later other leading countries will also get them. We are aware that they are under development.”

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Putin’s warning to the West

Russia war latest: Long-awaited US air defences arrive in Ukraine

He added: “We have this system now. And this is important.”

Detailing the missile’s alleged capabilities, Mr Putin claimed it is so powerful that using several fitted with conventional warheads in one attack could be as devastating as a strike with nuclear weapons.

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General Sergei Karakayev, head of Russia’s strategic missile forces, said the Oreshnik could reach targets across Europe and be fitted with either nuclear or conventional warheads – while Mr Putin alleged Western air defence systems will not be able to stop the missiles.

Mr Putin said of the Oreshnik: “There is no countermeasure to such a missile, no means of intercepting it, in the world today. And I will emphasise once again that we will continue testing this newest system. It is necessary to establish serial production.”

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What are storm shadow missiles?
How bionic limps are helping Ukrainian troops

Testing the Oreshnik will happen “in combat, depending on the situation and the character of security threats created for Russia“, the president added, stating there is “a stockpile of such systems ready for use”.

NATO and Ukraine are expected to hold emergency talks on Tuesday.

Meanwhile Ukraine’s parliament cancelled a session as security was tightened following the strike on Dnipro, a central city with a population of around one million. No fatalities were reported.

EU leaders condemn Russia’s ‘heinous attacks’

Numerous EU leaders have addressed Russia’s escalation of the conflict with Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk saying the war is “entering a decisive phase [and] taking on very dramatic dimensions”.

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Russia’s new missile – what does it mean?

Speaking in Kyiv, Czech foreign minister Jan Lipavsky called Moscow’s strike an “escalatory step and an attempt of the Russian dictator to scare the population of Ukraine and to scare the population of Europe”.

At a news conference, Mr Lipavsky gave his full support for delivering the additional air defence systems needed to protect Ukrainian civilians from the “heinous attacks”.

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