(Port-au-Prince) Eight people, including six nuns who were going to schools, were kidnapped Friday in Port-au-Prince, according to the Haitian Conference of Religious (CHR), in a context of an increase in kidnappings in the country.
“The CHR office learns with great emotion the sad news of the kidnapping of six nuns from the Congregation of the Sisters of Saint Anne and other occupants of the bus which transported them,” the organization wrote in a note internal obtained by AFP.
Armed people kidnapped them on Friday around 7 a.m. in a street in the capital, when the nuns were on their way to the various educational establishments in which they work, said a CHR official, contacted by AFP .
He did not provide further information about the other two occupants.
“These excess kidnappings fill the consecrated people of Haiti and souls of good will with sadness and fear,” added the CHR.
A leader of the Sainte-Anne congregation, contacted by AFP, did not wish to comment “for security reasons linked to the victims”.
For the moment, there has been no report of a ransom demand from the kidnappers.
Kidnappings, of strangers and personalities, have been increasing for several weeks in Port-au-Prince and on certain national roads. Last week, a doctor and a justice of the peace were kidnapped before being released after ransoms were paid.
The son of another doctor responsible for important health centers, taken away by kidnappers at the end of November, is still in captivity despite the payment of several ransoms and demonstrations of support.
These kidnappings come at the same time as an intensification of deadly attacks in Port-au-Prince by gangs, which control a large part of the capital.
Faced with a deep economic, security and political crisis, the UN Security Council gave its agreement in October to send a multinational mission led by Kenya to Haiti to help the Haitian police.