Haiti’s famed gingerbread hotel that inspired the novelist Graham Greene was burned down by gangs as the country plunged further into crisis.

Once a presidential palace, the storied Hotel Oloffson was built at the end of the 19th century and had survived coups, dictatorships and the 2010 earthquake.

But the hotel manager Richard Morse has confirmed the Port-au-Prince landmark visited by stars including Mick Jagger and Elizabeth Taylor had become the latest target of gang violence gripping the Caribbean country.

Pictures of the devastation showed the once grand white mansion, which boasted turrets, spires and wooden lattice work had been reduced to piles of ash, with just the singed bones of the building left behind.