On an abandoned airfield turned makeshift campsite,
we step into this cramped space,
the Kadu family's home lying on her family's only bed.
We need 8 year old Regina Kadu looking at us
with eyes that have seen the torment and suffering that
is engulfing Haiti.
Do you remember where where you were when
the bullet hit you when you got shot?
With her four year old sister keeping close watch?
Mugina tells me she was playing with friends when they
were caught in the crossfire of a gang shootout.
She and her friends hid,
but not quickly enough, a bullet tearing through her back
and out her abdomen.
Her dad frustrated by life
and he says they've been here about a year and
a half.
Before that they were in
their own home, but they said because of the gang
violence,
it was overtaken. Their home was burned down,
so here they are, hoping to have found what would
have been a safe refuge.
But he says not even this is safe.
Feel better, OK?
Chaos now grips much of Haiti,
especially the capital, Port-au-Prince. For the first time,
a Haitian security source tells us rival gangs are now
working together,
launching a wide scale series of attacks against the government,
going after the airport, police stations and prisons.
The terrible toll of the violence felt nearly everywhere,
even here behind the high walls of Quizito family's home
for children,
run by Sister Paisi. The rules here posted on the
wall
children must be friends. They must be friends.
They must they must get along with each other.
Getting along, that's the challenge here.
Sister Paisi's lived in Port-au-Prince for 25 years,
the last five of which she's dedicated to creating safe
spaces for children,
many of those here orphaned because of the deadly gang
violence.
I never could have thought that things could become moist,
but it did. It did.
It did, year after year.
More corruption, more violence, more weapons.
This place is now at capacity and then some.
The children keep coming, she tells me.
Sister says she also gets prayer requests from those you
might not expect.
Sister, pray for us. Don't you see we are in
danger?
Pray for us Very. I'm hearing that every day from
the gang members.
The gang members are asking you to pray for them.
Yes, yes, yes, yes. Some of the gang members themselves
just kids.
This 14 year old says he was recruited at 11.
I can't go to school,
he tells me, wishing he could escape the gang's control.
I watched so many people get killed and then I
have to set their bodies on fire,
he says
outside of Haiti's capital. It's more often the anti government
protests rather than the gangs paralyzing cities in Jeremy.
We drive with members of the World Food Program to
a local school
and these kids have not been in school since early
January and they'll they'll they'll tell you why.
The Catholic priest who runs it shows us around,
just noticing on the chalkboard here in the last date,
January 11th. It's the last time kids were actually inside
this classroom since it's been
empty. Violent protest erupted in January,
making it too dangerous for the
school's 234 students to travel to.
For the staff here, it's heartbreaking.
Do you think about them in what's been now more
than a month that they haven't been here?
Do you think about their situation?
It's very sad for them,
for us also, because I know
he knows it's about more than missing out on an
education.
I know they are at home,
They are angry,
they have nothing.
They are children.
They have to eat.
Hunger is what drove this young teen to go out
at night alone in gang controlled territory last year,
hoping to find food. Instead,
she tells us she was attacked and raped,
giving birth in January to a baby boy,
the son of a likely gang member.
She thinks
I can't abandoned him. She tells me.
My mother struggled a lot with me,
so I have to do the same for him,
Even if it is a child raising
another child, she says. Children bearing the brunt of a
broken country that is spiralling further into chaos with each
passing day.
David Culver, CNN.