Burnt police station near Port-au-Prince airport, Dec. 2023. (Diego Da Rin/International Crisis Group)
At least 70 people, including 10 women and three infants, were killed and 16 were injured after gangs armed with automatic rifles launched a series of attacks on a town in Haiti’s breadbasket, torching dozens of homes and vehicles and sending residents fleeing, the U.N. human rights office said Friday.
The massacre on Thursday in Pont-Sondé, a town some 60 miles north of Port-au-Prince, is one of the worst in Haiti’s Artibonite department, an agricultural region that has increasingly been terrorized by gang violence that is metastasizing from the capital.
It poses a new challenge for a U.N.-backed, Kenyan-led international police mission to Haiti that is tasked with beating back the gangs and putting the country on the road to new elections, but has seen its efforts hobbled by a lack of personnel and funding.
The Haitian government said Friday that it had sent medical supplies and security reinforcements, including members of an anti-gang policing unit and the Kenyan-led mission, to the region.
“Today, once again, once too often, we are faced with the most absolute cowardice,” Haitian Prime Minister Gary Conille said in a statement posted to X. “This heinous crime, perpetrated against defenseless women, men and children, is not only an attack on these victims, but on the entire Haitian nation.”
He addressed the gangs: “To those who sow terror … you will not break our resolve,” he said. “You will not subdue this people who have always fought for their dignity and freedom. We will never give up our right to live in peace, in security and in justice.”
The attack by members of the Gran Grif gang began after 3 a.m., Haitian officials have said. The U.N. human rights office said that the gang members reportedly set at least 45 homes and 34 vehicles ablaze and that at least two gang members were injured in clashes with police.
“We call for increased international financial and logistical assistance” for the Kenyan-led mission, the U.N. human rights office said in a statement. “It is crucial that the authorities carry out a prompt and thorough investigation into this attack, hold those responsible to account and guarantee reparations for the victims and their families.”
