CAP-HAITIEN, Haiti — Heckled by protesters and surrounded by phalanxes of heavily armed guards, foreign diplomats and Haitian politicians attended the funeral of Haiti’s assassinated president Friday, a tense event that laid bare a fractured nation’s problems instead of providing an opportunity for healing.

Less than a half-hour into the funeral, foreign dignitaries including the U.S. delegation, led by Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, departed over safety concerns because of reported gunshots fired outside the event. White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said “the presidential delegation is safe and accounted for in light of the reported shootings outside the funeral,” and was heading back to the United States, cutting the visit to Haiti short.

Earlier, as the flag-covered coffin President Jovenel Moise was brought onto a central stage lined with white curtains, carried by men in military uniforms, a moment that many had hoped would help promote reconciliation was overshadowed by tensions that had exploded in the streets the day before.

A line of Moise’s supporters stood by the entrance to the funeral, held at his family homestead, and yelled at arriving politicians: “Justice for Jovenel!”

When Haiti’s national police chief, Leon Charles, arrived, the crowd surged around him and erupted into shouting and finger pointing. As he passed a grandstand of invited guests, many there also jumped to their feet to yell their displeasure.

“He killed the president!” shouted Marie Michelle Nelcifor, adding that she believed Moise had telephoned Charles while assassins attacked his home but that Charles had not sent police officers to defend him. “Where were the security guards?” she asked.

Others were angry that the president would be buried before the investigation into his assassination was completed. “They are burning him surrounded by his assassins!” shouted Kettie Compere, a mother of two looking up at the grandstand of diplomats and Haitian politicians where Charles had settled.

When Martine Moise, the president’s widow, arrived dressed in black with a large black hat and a mask with a photo of her husband affixed to it, the crowd surged around her, singing “arrest them, arrest them.”

Speaking publicly for the first time since the assassination, which also left her wounded, Moise delivered a eulogy that was pointedly political. While telling the mourners that her family is “living in dark days,” she also implied that her husband had been killed by the country’s leading bourgeoise families.

“Is it a crime to want to free the state from the clutches of the corrupt oligarchs?” she said, standing at the podium with all three of her children surrounding her.

The smell of tear gas wafted over the family compound during the funeral. Afterward, guests returning to the city of Cap-Haitien nearby saw the fresh remnants of burning tires and navigated through streets blocked with felled trees and rocks.

In remarks during the U.S. delegation’s arrival at Cap-Haitien’s airport earlier Friday, Thomas-Greenfield said: “Our delegation is here to bring a message to the Haitian people: You deserve democracy, stability, security and prosperity, and we stand with you in this time of crisis. So, we come here in solidarity with the Haitian people during this difficult time.”

The July 7 killing of Moise, 53, in the bedroom of his home near Port-au-Prince, the capital, has plunged the Caribbean nation of 11 million into one of its deepest crises. Officials have blamed a group of Colombian mercenaries, but many questions remain unanswered, including who planned the assassination and why no members of his security detail were hurt. Several members of that security detail have been questioned and taken into custody.

Pressured by Western countries led by the United States, Haiti’s other political leaders, jostling for power, have pledged an orderly transition and a democratic process. But it was clear even before the funeral that deep divisions would shape and possibly subvert what many hoped would be a venue for reconciliation.

Just hours earlier, the northern city of Cap-Haitien — 30 minutes from his family homestead — had burned with anger and frustration, exposing Haiti’s the distrust of the elite in the country’s less developed north.

On Thursday, the streets billowed with the black smoke of burning tires, a common form of protest in a country split by geography, wealth and power. Large crowds of demonstrators ran though the narrow colonial streets, chanting, “They killed Jovenel, and the police were there.”

“We sent them someone alive; they sent him back a cadaver,” screamed Frantz Atole, a 42-year-old mechanic, promising violence. “This country is not going to be silent.”

A new government was installed in the capital this week, and its leaders vowed to get to the bottom of the killing and to build consensus among the country’s political factions and its civic groups.