Port-Au-Prince: In a shocking development, gang members brandishing automatic rifles stormed through a town in Haiti's breadbasket region, killing at least 70 people and forcing more than 6,000 to flee, causing widespread panic even in a country grown accustomed to outbreaks of violence. More people were severely injured in the attack in the early hours of Thursday at Pont-Sonde, in the agricultural region of Artibonite in western Haiti.
Gran Grif gang leader Luckson Elan took responsibility for the massacre, saying it was in retaliation for civilians remaining passive while police and vigilante groups killed his soldiers. The UN migration agency said some 6,270 people had fled their homes due to the attacks, most of them sheltered by families living in nearby Saint-Marc and other towns, while others are staying in makeshift camps.
The gang members set fire to dozens of homes and vehicles, local authorities said, in one of the deadliest attacks in recent years in the Caribbean nation that has seen many massacres and little justice for their victims. "This odious crime against defenceless women, men and children is not only an attack against victims but against the entire Haitian nation," Prime Minister Garry Conille said on X.
Worsening conflict in Haiti
A spokesperson for Haiti's national police told Reuters on Friday evening that the director of police in charge of the Artibonite department had been replaced. "For now, reinforcements are at the location to contain the situation and security forces are in control," the spokesperson said.
The killings are the latest sign of a worsening conflict in Haiti, where armed gangs control most of the capital Port-au-Prince and are expanding to nearby regions, fuelling hunger and making hundreds of thousands homeless. Promised international support continues to lag and nearby nations have deported migrants back to the country.
"The gang did not meet any resistance," Bertide Horace, a spokesperson from the Dialogue and Reconciliation Commission to Save the Artibonite Valley, told Reuters, adding that police officers remained in their station, perhaps thinking they would be outgunned by the gang members. An armoured truck stationed in nearby Verrettes also failed to mobilise, said Horace, as two of her own family members were injured during the attack. Many victims were shot in the head as gang members went house to house, she added.
Rights organization RNDDH said the death toll was likely higher as entire families had been wiped out. "At the time of writing, corpses are strewn on the ground as their loved ones have not yet been able to recover them," it said in a report. RNDDH said rumors had been circulating for two months about a potential massacre in retaliation for residents' help for a vigilante group that was preventing the gang from extorting money on the national highway through the town.
What is Gran Grif gang?
The Gran Grif gang is based in the area and has been accused of mass kidnappings, rapes, murders, hijackings and forcing farmers off their lands, as well as child recruitment. Elan was added to the UN sanctions list last month. In an audio message shared on social media on Thursday, Elan blamed the town's victims and the state for his gang's attack.
According to the UN, no progress has been made in the cases of any mass killings committed since 2021, as well as several major massacres since 2017. Police are alleged to have taken part in some mass killings. Gang leader Jimmy "Barbeque" Cherizier, a former police officer, was accused by the UN of planning and taking part in the 2018 killing of 71 civilians in the capital's port-side neighborhood of La Saline.
The World Food Programme has blamed gangs operating in the region, extorting farmers, stealing crops and forcing workers off their lands, for spiraling food prices and shortages that have pushed 5 million into severe food insecurity and thousands in Port-au-Prince to famine-level hunger.
(with Reuters input)
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