Escalating street protests have pushed Haiti’s already dire social crisis this week into what regional leaders described as a “low-intensity civil war,” leaving residents of the capital cut off from the outside world and scrambling for basic necessities like drinking water and food.

Protesters set up barricades made up of debris, felled trees and tires throughout the capital, Port-au-Prince, looted shops and humanitarian warehouses and attacked banks and residences of pro-government politicians and better-off citizens.

Simmering outbreaks of unrest throughout the island nation have coalesced into the largest wave of protests in years following the government’s announcement last Sunday that it would raise the country’s highly subsidized fuel prices.

The protests quickly broadened into a general, visceral rejection of Haiti’s dire living conditions, characterized by widespread hunger, a lack of basic services, omnipresent gang violence, runaway inflation and the weak rule of a caretaker prime minister, Ariel Henry. Mr. Henry took power following the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse last year.
As Mr. Henry’s government’s already tenuous hold on the country has largely evaporated during the unrest, other factions have attempted to fill the power vacuum.

An opposition leader, Moïse Jean Charles, called on supporters to shut down the banks at a rally in the northern city of Cap Haitien, prompting the crowd to chant, “We are going to set them on fire.”

A prominent gang leader, Jimmy Chérizier, known as Barbecue, said Haiti’s poor must depose Mr. Henry at a demonstration he held in his stronghold in Port-au-Prince on Thursday.