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| - Gunmen killed a journalist, a political activist and at least three other people in a rash of overnight shootings blamed on street gangs in Haiti's capital, the government said Wednesday. Photos of reporter Diego Charles lying dead on the ground and of Antoinette Duclair in her car circulated on Haitian social media. Duclair was dropping Charles off at his home when they were shot. At least three other people were shot and killed in the same neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, angering locals who protested by dumping flaming tires in the road. Prime Minister Claude Joseph's office released a statement expressing his condolences over the killings. Gang violence has been sharply on the rise this year, with gun fights between rival groups prompting many residents of poor districts of the city to flee their homes. "We are dismayed by this murder, which lengthens the list of journalists killed in the past three years," said Jacques Desrosiers, head of the Haitian Journalists Association. "As they always do, judicial authorities will announce investigations that lead nowhere," said Desrosiers. "We are used to that." In 2000, Haiti's most prominent journalist, Jean Dominique, was murdered in a case that remains unsolved to this day. More recently, photojournalist Vladjimir Legagneur went to the now gang-plagued Martissant neighborhood of the capital on a reporting assignment in 2018 and was never heard from again. Police have still not published the results of DNA tests performed on a body found a few days after Legagneur vanished. Probes into the killing of two journalists in 2019 yielded nothing, either. amb-dw/ft
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