THE United States will do all in its power to free US and Canadian missionaries kidnapped in Haiti, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said yesterday.

“We have in the administration been relentlessly focused on this,” Blinken told a news conference on a visit to Ecuador.

“We will do everything we can to help resolve the situation.”

He said that the State Department was in close contact with the Haitian government and the FBI on the abductions of a group of 17 missionaries, for whom a gang is demanding a ransom of US$1 million (RM4.2 million) each.

“Unfortunately, this is also indicative of a much larger problem and that is a security situation that is, quite simply, unsustainable,” Blinken said.

“That can’t go on. That’s certainly not conducive to an environment in which the work that needs to be done,” including “investments that need to be made in the people of Haiti, in their future, can be made.”

Gangs have seized effective control of much of Port-au-Prince which has also had an intensifying political crisis including with the assassination of President Jovenel Moise. – AFP, October 20, 2021.