PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jan 19, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - An additional 217 Kenyan police officers landed in Haiti on Saturday to bolster a multinational force seeking to restore order to the violence-ridden Caribbean island.

Criminal gangs still control some 85 percent of the capital Port-au-Prince, the United Nations estimates, despite the deployment last June of the Kenyan-led Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS) under UN auspices.

The Kenyan forces, who were greeted at the airport in Port-au-Prince by Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aime, will reinforce the first batch of 400 officers deployed to Haiti last year.

"The arrival of these reinforcements marks a crucial step in freeing our country from the grip of criminal networks and restoring peace," the prime minister said.

A government advisor who was also at the airport, Fritz Alphonse Jean, said Haiti was "at a turning point."

In a statement earlier Saturday, Kenya's Interior Minister Kipchumba Murkomen said the Kenyan-led mission in Haiti "has made tremendous progress in reducing gang violence, earning praise across the globe, including from both the outgoing and incoming US administrations."

Gang violence killed at least 5,601 people in Haiti last year, about a thousand more than in 2023, the UN said. More than a million Haitians have been forced to flee their homes, three times as many as a year ago.

Kenyan President William Ruto said last September that some 2,500 police officers would eventually be deployed.

The UN Security Council in September 2024 extended the mission's mandate without discussing whether to place it under direct UN control, as requested by many Haitian authorities.