Léon Charles, the director of the national police chief of Haiti, said that four suspects were killed and two others arrested following the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse early Wednesday morning, according to NBC News.

Charles also said that three police officers had been held hostage but that police freed them.

"The police are engaged in a battle with the assailants," he said at a news conference. "We are pursuing them so that, in a gunfight, they meet their fate or in a gunfight they die, or we apprehend them."

The authorities did not name any of the suspects or cite any evidence linking them to the assassination

Haiti's Communications Secretary Frantz Exantus tweeted Wednesday that local police had arrested the "presumed" assassins of President Jovenel Moïse.

As EBONY previously reported, Moïse was shot and killed at about 1 a.m. local time Wednesday by a group of armed assailants in his private residence.

First Lady Martine Moïse, who was injured during the shooting, was flown to Florida and received medical attention in Miami, Bocchit Edmond, Haiti's ambassador to the United States said. She remains in critical condition.

“A group of unidentified individuals, some of them speaking Spanish, attacked the private residence of the president of the republic and thus fatally wounded the head of state,” Interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph said, describing the events.

On Wednesday evening, Joseph declared himself the head of the government in a national television broadcast. During the broadcast, he announced that he and his fellow ministers had declared a “state of siege” but he again called for calm throughout the country.

“Let’s search for harmony to advance together, so the country doesn’t fall into chaos,” he said.