The National Police Service (NPS) has refuted claims that some of its officers deployed to Haiti on a U.N.-backed peacekeeping mission have been killed. These claims surfaced online, alleging that seven officers had been killed in the war-torn Caribbean nation due to increasing pressure from armed gangs against the deployed troops.
An image circulated widely over the weekend showed a recent shot of the Kenyan police patrolling a street in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, with text asserting that the Kenyan officers had been reported dead.
“7 Kenya police reported dead in Haiti aki [President William Ruto] God will never forgive you,” read the text.
On Monday morning, NPS however termed the image as fake.
The police service did not provide further information about the mission or the state of the Kenyan troops.
The first batch of about 400 Kenyan police officers arrived in Haiti on June 25.
Kenyan President William Ruto had ceremonially seen the police off a day earlier in Nairobi, in what he described as a “historic” mission of solidarity.
Hundreds more police are expected from Kenya and other nations.
