Haiti gang attack kills at least 70, displaces 6,000
More than 6,000 people were displaced from their homes after a gang attack on 3 October in the central region of Artibonite killed at least 70 people – including three infants – and left dozens wounded.
Members of the Gran Grif gang stormed into the small town of Pont-Sondé – about 100 kilometres from the capital, Port-au-Prince – with automatic rifles, dragging people from their homes, executing many of them, and setting houses and vehicles on fire.
The massacre is yet another sign of the catastrophic deterioration of security in Haiti, where the deployment of some 400 Kenyan police and a few dozen Jamaican security force personnel as part of a Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission (approved by the UN) appears to have done little to stem the rising tide of gang violence.
According to a report released last week by the UN’s migration agency, IOM, more than 700,000 people, half of them children, are now displaced in the Caribbean island nation – a 22% increase since last June.
Prime Minister Garry Conille condemned the 3 October attack, saying it was “unacceptable and demands an urgent, rigorous and coordinated state response”.
Denouncing the massacre in Pont-Sondé, UN authorities took the opportunity to call, once again, for more support for the MSS, which lacks funding, personnel, and logistical resources, and which has been questioned for doing little to address the crisis.
Meanwhile, Haitians’ humanitarian needs continue to soar.
Since January, at least 3,661 people have been killed, and a new UN report shows that nearly half the population – 5.4 million people – now face acute hunger. One in six children are close to famine, and the hunger drives them to join gangs, according to Save the Children. Displaced women and girls are facing unprecedented levels of insecurity and sexual violence.
For more on how gang violence is impacting lives in Haiti, read:
Intimate accounts of life in Haiti from a ‘fixer’ for foreign journalists
For more than two years, Jean Marseille sent audio recordings documenting the hurdles of daily life in Haiti. His dispatches are now a book.
