PORT-AU-PRINCE: Armed men belonging to a gang have killed around 70 people, including 3 infants, as they swept through a Haitian town shooting automatic rifles at residents, a top official of the United Nations said.
A spokesperson for the United Nations’ Human Rights Office has said that they are horrified by Thursday’s gang strikes in the town of Pont-Sonde in Haiti’s Artibonite department. It said that at least 16 people were seriously wounded in the attack in the early hours of Thursday. The spokesperson stated that two gang members were also killed during the exchange of fire with Haitian police personnel.
Local media reported that the gang members set fire to more than 45 houses and 34 vehicles, forcing locals to flee their houses.
“This odious crime against defenseless men, women, and kids is not only an attack against victims but against the entire country,” Haitian Prime Minister Garry Conille said in a statement via social media. Garry Conille said that the security forces, backed by their international partners, are reinforcing their intervention.
Local media reported on Thursday that thousands of locals from Pont-Sonde were making their way toward the coastal town of Saint-Marc. The area is a major rice producer located in Haiti’s breadbasket Artibonite region at an important crossing connecting Port-au-Prince to the north.
Gang leader Jimmy “Barbeque” Cherizier said in a video message that the attack was part of a plan to stop Artibonite from supplying food to the country.
Haiti’s Government and UN
Haiti’s government had requested that a U.N.-backed mission, which is made up of volunteer contributions and has so far received just a fraction of the resources it was pledged, be converted into a formal U.N. peacekeeping mission. However, that proposal was blocked by China and Russia at the UNSC.
“We call for increased global financial and logistical help to the Multinational Security Support Mission in Haiti,” an official said, calling for an urgent probe and reparations for the victims. The United Nations estimated at the end of September that 3,661 people had been killed in the ongoing violence since January, which amounts to more than 13 killed daily this year.
