(Port-au-Prince) The violent attack by a gang last week in the town of Pont-Sondé, in Haiti, left 109 dead and more than forty injured, a local official said on Wednesday from a Haitian radio station.
Posted at 5:16 p.m.
According to the vice-delegate of the Saint Marc district Walter Montas, who communicated this new assessment on Magik 9 radio, a “fragile calm” has reigned in the Pont-Sondé sector since the arrival of police reinforcements on site. .
On the night of October 3 to 4, members of an armed gang fired automatic rifles at the inhabitants of this locality located approximately 100 km northwest of the capital Port-au-Prince, burning dozens of houses. and vehicles.
A report drawn up by the UN initially reported at least 70 deaths, including women and children.
The Haitian government, which condemned the “unspeakable brutality” of the attack, announced the dispatch of Haitian units specializing in the fight against gangs and members of the multinational force led by Kenya.
This multinational security support mission in Haiti began deploying this summer in this poor Caribbean country ravaged by gang violence and facing a serious humanitarian, economic and political crisis for years.
In a press release, the Haitian police indicated on Wednesday that they were proceeding, with this mission, “to the dismantling of all gang centers” in the Artibonite region, in particular against the “Gran grif” (Grande Griffe), originally of the attack.
This armed group specializes in truck hijacking and kidnapping for ransom. It is led by Luckson Elan, targeted by US sanctions for his involvement in serious human rights violations.
“The operations are starting to produce satisfactory results,” the police said in this press release, without providing a quantified assessment of the operations.
Several gang members were killed, Walter Montas said, without elaborating.
At least 3,661 people have been killed since January in Haiti, undermined by violence, according to a figure cited at the end of September by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
This UN body also called for “an increase in international financial and logistical assistance” for the multinational force, composed mainly of Kenyan police officers and which has struggled to produce concrete results since its arrival.
The wave of violence and a catastrophic humanitarian situation have forced more than 700,000 people, half of them children, to flee their homes to find refuge elsewhere in the country, according to the latest figures from the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
