(Geneva) A gang killed “at least 70 people”, including women and children, on Thursday in Haiti and seriously injured at least 16 others, the UN said on Friday.
“Members of the “Gran Grif” gang, armed with automatic rifles, fired on the population, killing at least 70 people, including around 10 women and three infants,” said the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. man in a statement, saying he was “horrified”.
The massacre was perpetrated in Pont Sondé, a locality in the Artibonite department located on the road linking Port-au-Prince to Cap-Haïtien.
Two of the seriously injured people are gang members hit during an exchange of fire with Haitian police.
The gang members “are said to have set fire to at least 45 houses and 34 vehicles,” forcing residents to flee.
The High Commission calls for “an increase in international financial and logistical assistance to the Multinational Security Support Mission (MMAS) in Haiti.”
The MMAS, composed mainly of Kenyan police officers, recently began a mission to support the Haitian police who are having great difficulty opposing the heavily armed gangs who set fires and has been bloodying the Haitian capital and its surroundings for many months.
“It is also essential that the authorities carry out a rapid and thorough investigation into this attack, that they bring those responsible to justice, and that they guarantee reparations to the victims and their families,” the High Commission still hopes.
A wish that is likely to remain a dead letter, given the fragility of the country’s institutions.
At the end of September, the United States announced sanctions targeting the leader of the “Gran Grif” gang, Luckson Elan, for his involvement in serious human rights violations, as well as a former member of Parliament, Prophane Victor, for his role in training, supporting and arming gangs.
At least 3,661 people have been killed since January in the country due to violence, the High Commission said last week.
The wave of violence and a catastrophic humanitarian situation have forced more than 700,000 people, half of them children, to flee their homes to find refuge elsewhere in the country, according to the latest figures from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) published Wednesday.
Around three-quarters of these internally displaced people are now housed in the country’s provinces, with the Great South region alone hosting 45%, according to the UN agency.