Haiti’s beleaguered police made a desperate plea for all officers with a weapon and a car to join the war against heavily-armed gangs running riot across the capital Port-au-Prince following a mass jailbreak.

Bodies now lie in the streets across various neighbourhoods as criminals and security forces engage in ferocious shootouts – while residents cower in their homes.

In a frantic message, one of the country’s police unions had called on all officers with firearms or vehicles to immediately report for duty beside the military to stop the assault on the country’s largest prison.

It warned that if the inmates escaped, “no one will be spared in the capital because there will be 3,000 extra criminals” on the streets.

The post added: “Stick together, stick together, stick together, together we can avoid the disaster. Never forget, the best way to defend is to attack and attack well!”

Yet despite the union’s plea, gang members wielding machine guns and machetes successfully stormed the jail on Saturday night and freed almost all of its 3,600 inmates.

The police now face difficult odds to restore order. There are just 9,000 officers in a population of 11 million. Meanwhile, the criminals already control an estimated 80 per cent of the capital.

The handful of prisoners who remained inside the ramshackle jail included 18 Colombian mercenaries accused of the 2021 assassination of president Jovenel Moise, which plunged Haiti into its current downward spiral.

One of those Colombians, Francisco Uribe, pleaded to be saved on social media over the weekend, warning that the gangs were “massacring people indiscriminately inside the cells.”

Last month, prosecutors charged several people, including a former prime minister and Moise’s widow Martine, over his killing, although the alleged motive remains unclear.

The current uprising is being led by a warlord and former police officer Jimmy Chérizier, nicknamed “Barbecue” after he once allegedly burnt down an entire block of shanties while its residents were still inside.

He is trying to head off a UN peacekeeping force from intervening in Haiti, the Americas’ poorest nation, which has had a troubled history since 1804 when a slave uprising won independence from Napoleon’s forces.

Ariel Henry, the country’s embattled prime minister, who postponed elections originally planned for February, is currently in Kenya negotiating the details of the UN intervention.

The Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Benin and Chad have all agreed to send troops. 

Chérizier is now targeting the capital’s airport in an attempt to stop Henry from returning to Haiti.

Around 200 gangs operate in the country, according to a report published last month by the Global Initiative against Transnational Crime, a Geneva-based think tank.

Some are “well-structured, well-armed and operationally competent,” it warned, and fund themselves through a mix of extortion, robbery, kidnapping, contraband and drug-running.