By Harold Isaac
PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) -Armed men belonging to the Gran Grif gang killed at least 70 people, including three infants, as they swept through a Haitian town shooting automatic rifles at residents, a spokesperson for the United Nations’ Human Rights Office said on Friday.
“We are horrified by Thursday’s gang attacks in the town of Pont-Sonde in Haiti’s Artibonite department,” spokesperson Thameen Al-Kheetan said in a statement.
At least another 16 people were seriously injured in the attack in the early hours of Thursday, including two gang members hit during an exchange of fire with Haitian police, according to the U.N. The gang members reportedly set fire to at least 45 houses and 34 vehicles, forcing residents to flee their homes.
“This odious crime against defenseless women, men and children is not only an attack against victims but against the entire Haitian nation,” Prime Minister Garry Conille said on X.
“Security forces, backed by our international partners, are reinforcing their intervention.”
In an audio message shared on social media on Thursday, Gran Grif leader Luckson Elan, who was sanctioned by the U.N. last month, blamed the state and victims for the attacks, accusing residents of remaining passive while his soldiers were killed by police or vigilante groups.
“It’s Pont-Sonde residents who are at fault. What happened in Pont-Sonde is the fault of the state,” he said.
Local media reported on Thursday that thousands of residents from Pont-Sonde were making their way toward the coastal town of Saint-Marc.
Pont-Sonde is a major rice producer located in Haiti’s breadbasket Artibonite region at an important crossing connecting the capital Port-au-Prince to the north.
Artibonite has seen some of the worst violence outside the capital, compounding a worsening hunger crisis that has seen half the population suffer from severe food insecurity and thousands in Port-au-Prince facing famine-level hunger.
Gang leader Jimmy “Barbeque” Cherizier, who has acted as spokesperson for an alliance of armed gangs in the capital, said in a video the attack was part of a plan to prevent Artibonite from supplying food to the country.
The number of people internally displaced by the conflict has meanwhile surged past 700,000, nearly doubling in six months despite the partial deployment of a U.N.-backed mission mandated to help under-resourced police restore order.
Haiti’s government had requested that the mission, which is made up of volunteer contributions and has so far received just a fraction of the resources it was promised, be converted into a formal U.N. peacekeeping mission. That proposal was blocked by Russia and China at the U.N. Security Council.
“We call for increased international financial and logistical assistance to the Multinational Security Support Mission in Haiti,” Al-Kheetan said, calling for an urgent investigation and reparations for the victims.
The U.N. estimated at the end of September that 3,661 people had been killed in the conflict since January, which amounts to over 13 killed daily this year.
(Reporting by Harold Isaac and Sarah Morland; Editing by Aida Pelaez-Fernandez and Bill Berkrot)