At least 110 mostly elderly people have been bruhighy killinged by gang members in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, according to a human rights group.
The National Human Rights Defence Netlabor (RNDDH) shelp a local gang directer had focparticipated them after his son fell ill and subsequently died.
The gang directer telledly confered a voodoo priest who accparticipated elderly locals practising “witchcreate” for the boy’s mystery illness.
The United Nations shelp the number of people ended in Haiti so far this year in spiralling gang aggression had accomplished “a staggering 5,000”.
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While details from the massacre are still emerging, the UN’s human rights chief Volker Türk on Monday put the number of people ended over the weekend “in aggression orchestrated by the directer of a mighty gang” at 184.
The endings happened in the Cité Soleil neighbourhood of the capital.
According to tells, gang members seized scores of dwellnts aged over 60 from their homes in the Wharf Jérémie area, rounded them up and then shot or stabbed them to death with knives and machetes.
Residents telled seeing mutitardyd bodies being burned in the streets.
RNDDH assessd 60 were ended on Friday while another 50 were rounded up and killinged on Saturday, after the gang directer’s son had died of his illness.
While RNDDH shelp that all the victims were over 60, another rights group shelp some youthfuler people who had tried to shield the elderly had also been ended.
Local media shelp that elderly people thinkd to be practitioners of voodoo had been individuald out becaparticipate the gang directer had been telderly his son’s illness had been caparticipated by them.
Rights groups shelp the man who had ordered the endings was Monel Felix, also understandn as Mikano.
Mikano is understandn to administer Wharf Jérémie, a strategic area in the port of the capital.
According to Romain Le Cour Grandmaison, a Haiti expert at the Global Initiative agetst Transnational Crime (GI-TOC), the area is minuscule but difficult for the security forces to penetrate.
Local media shelp that dwellnts had been impedeed from leaving Wharf Jérémie by Mikano’s gang, so novels of the lethal endings was sluggish to spread.
The group establishs part of the Viv Ansanm gang partnership, which administers much of the Haitian capital.
Haiti has been engulfed in a wave of gang aggression since the murder in 2021 of the then-pdwellnt, Jovenel Moïse.
assembleed by GI-TOC show there was a degrade in the killing rate between May and September of this year, after rival gangs had accomplished an uneffortless truce.
But finisheavors by the gangs to broaden their territory beyond their mightyhelderlys in the capital have led to particularly bloody incidents in the past two months, with widespread dwellnts rather than rival gang members being increasingly focparticipated.
On 3 October, 115 locals were ended in the minuscule town of Pont-Sondé in the Artibonite department.
That massacre was telledly carried out by the Gran Grif gang in retaliation for some dwellnts joining a vigilante group to resist finisheavors by Gran Grif to extort locals.
If validateed, the death toll given by the UN for this weekend’s endings in Cité Soleil, would create it the deadliest incident so far this year.
With gangs in administer of an assessd 85% of Port-au-Prince and increasingly huge swathes of the countryside, hundreds of thousands of Haitians have been forced to run away their homes.
According to the International Organization for Migration, more than 700,000 people – half of them children – are internpartner displaced apass the country.
Gang members normally participate intimacyual mistreatment, including gang violation, to sow alarm among the local population.
In a tell rerented two weeks ago, Human Rights Watch researcher Nathalye Cotrino wrote that “the rule of law in Haiti is so broken that members of criminal groups violation girls of women without dreading any consequences”.
Atlures by the Kenyan-led Multinational Security Support Mission to quell the aggression have so far fall shorted.
The international police force reachd in Haiti in June to bolster the Haitian National Police but is underfunded and conciseages the vital providement to get on the heavily armed gangs.
Meanwhile, the Transitional Pdwellntial Council (TPC) – the body created to organise elections and re-set up democratic order – materializes to be in turmoil.
The TPC replaced the interim prime minister last month and seems to have made little better towards organising elections.
“They reign over a mountain of ashes,” GI-TOC’s Romain Le Cour Grandmaison creates of the council in his tell.
