GANG members have raided a key district in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince that is home to numerous police officers and has been under siege for four days.

The siege has left residents fearful that the violence could spread across the city.

Street vendor Lita Sainthil told reporters that she had fled the Solino district on Thursday with her teenage nephew after being trapped in her house for hours by incessant gunfire.

The homes around hers were torched by gangs and she recalled seeing at least six bodies as she fled.

“It’s very scary now,” she said. “I don’t know where I’m going.

Fellow resident Nenel Volme said he had been chatting with a friend near his house on Sunday when gunfire erupted and a bullet struck a bone in his right hand.

“I don’t have the means to go to the hospital,” he said as he lifted his injured hand, which was wrapped in gauze.

It was not immediately clear who organised and was participating in the attack on Solino. 

The district, which is home to thousands of people, was infested with gangs before a United Nations peacekeeping mission drove them out in the mid-2000s.

Gangs are now estimated to control up to 80 per cent of Port-au-Prince and are suspected of killing nearly 4,000 people and kidnapping another 3,000 last year, overwhelming police in the country of nearly 12 million people.

On Thursday evening, Haiti’s National Police published a statement saying that officers had been deployed to Solino “with the aim of tracking down and arresting armed individuals seeking to sow panic among the civilian population.”

Haiti is awaiting the deployment of a foreign armed force to help quell gang violence. The Kenyan-led force was approved by the UN security council in October.

A Kenyan judge is expected to issue a ruling next Friday regarding an order that is currently blocking the deployment.