Haitian President Jovenel Moïse assassinated overnight in his home by gunmen, says acting prime minister

 A group of gunmen wielding assault weapons assassinated Haitian President Jovenel Moïse and wounded his wife in their home in the hills of the capital overnight, plunging the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation deeper into a crisis that has nudged it toward the status of a failed state.

The assassination came amid escalating political instability, as Moïse, 53, resisted calls from the opposition to step down and armed gangs with hazy allegiances seized control over greater portions of a Caribbean nation terrorized by waves of kidnappings, rapes and killings.

Haitian interim prime minister Claude Joseph said in a short statement Wednesday that Moïse was killed by unidentified assailants, some of whom spoke in Spanish and English in a Creole- and French-speaking country, raising the specter of an operation involving foreign mercenaries.

Joseph called the attack “odious, inhuman and barbaric” and said Haiti’s security situation was under the control of the country’s armed forces and police.

Coup allegations and rival claims to the presidency deepen Haiti’s crisis

Neighbors heard the outbreak of heavy machine-gun fire shortly after 1 a.m., with intense fighting coming in spurts of 10 to 15 minutes for over an hour.

“This was heavy machine-gun fire. The weapons I heard I had never heard in Haiti before,” said Ralph Chevry, a board member of the Haiti Center for Socio Economic Policy in the capital, Port-au-Prince. He lives just over a mile away from the president’s residence and said he clearly heard the fighting.

Chevry said neighbors heard the assailants speaking in Spanish. In audio recordings purportedly made during the attack, which could not be confirmed by The Washington Post, at least one man with a Southern American accent speaks in English, claiming to be from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.