Violence-ravaged Haiti is a nation "at war," its leader Laurent Saint-Cyr warned at the United Nations on Thursday, as he appealed for help from the international community to defeat gangs that have overrun the Caribbean country.

"Every day, innocent lives are snuffed out by bullets, fire and fear. Entire neighborhoods are disappearing, forcing more than a million people into internal exile and reducing to nothing memories, investments, and infrastructure," said Saint-Cyr, who heads the Haitian Transitional Presidential Council.

"Thousands of young people are condemned to despair, hundreds of girls and women subjected to rape will forever carry the physical and psychological scars of violence," he said in a speech to the UN's General Assembly.

He described how Haitian hospitals were bei

See Full Page