More than two dozen Haiti gang members were killed by police and members of the public after residents in the country’s Pétion-Ville neighborhood woke up Tuesday to panic and armed bandits in their midst.

The attempted attack on the tony residential suburb of Port-au-Prince, which has tried to shield itself from the capital’s murderous gangs, unleashed a response from residents not seen since April of last year when people from the Canapé-Vert neighborhood of Port-au-Prince hunted down and set fire to suspected gang members trying to invade their community.

At least 28 suspected gang members have been killed, police spokesman Lionel Lazarre told the Miami Herald, as residents sheltered in place and all of Pétion-Ville remained on lockdown.

“For the moment, the police are continuing to carry out operations,” he said.

Lazarre said he did not know yet where the gang members, who for days had been threatening to invade the community, were from. They were intercepted in the neighborhoods of Canapé-Vert, Lalue and Bourdon while en route. Police and members of the Kenya-led multinational security mission had been on heightened alert now for days amid the threats and constant gun battles around Port-au-Prince.

At least 10 gang members were killed by police and “by the residents who gave themselves justice” after a truck the gang members were traveling in, came across a police checkpoint near the Oasis Hotel on Panamerican Avenue, he said. “There was an exchange of gunfire and the gang members fled,” Lazarre said.

Corpses, cut apart with machetes and set on fire, were strewn on the road. In the Valley of Bourdon, not far from the residence of the U.S. ambassador to Haiti and the prime minister’s office, more charred bodies littered the roadway. At Ruelle Rivière, where a well-known clinic was set on fire, residents also lynched several suspected gang members in what is known in Haiti as “Bwa Kale,” the name given to the citizens’ self-defense brigade movement.

Throughout the areas under siege, residents blocked roads with vehicles and joined police in setting up checkpoints to keep out gang members.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said Tuesday through his spokesman that he “is alarmed by the escalating violence.”

With gangs gaining ground in the capital, Guterres “reiterates his pressing call to ensure that the [Multinational Security Support] mission receives the financial and logistical support it needs to successfully implement its mandate,” spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said in a statement. “He also emphasizes the importance of urgent progress in the political transition.”

Lazarre said events began unfolding around 2 a.m. when police intercepted both the truck and a minibus headed up the hill into the neighborhood. Both vehicles were carrying members of armed groups, which after days of battling police and members of the multinational police mission in the Solino and Nazon neighborhoods of the capital had openly declared war and said Pétion-Ville and neighboring Delmas would be next.