A spokesman for the UN Human Rights Office said on Friday that armed members of the Gran Grif gang shot automatic rifles at people in a Haitian town, killing at least 70 people, including three infants.
Spokesman Thameen Al-Kheetan issued a statement saying, “We are horrified by the gang attacks in the town of Pont-Sonde in Haiti’s Artibonite department on Thursday.”
According to the UN, the attack that occurred in the early hours of Thursday seriously injured at least 16 more people, including two gang members who were shot during a shootout with Haitian police. According to reports, the gang members set fire to at least 45 homes and 34 cars, forcing the occupants to escape.
Prime Minister Garry Conille stated on X that “this heinous crime against defenceless women, men, and children is not only an attack against victims but against the entire Haitian nation.”
“Security forces, backed by our international partners, are reinforcing their intervention.”
Gran Grif leader Luckson Elan, who was sanctioned by the UN last month, blamed the state and the victims for the attacks in an audio message that was posted on social media on Thursday. He said that locals had remained silent while police or vigilante groups killed his soldiers.
“The people who live in Pont-Sonde are to blame. He declared, “The state bears responsibility for what transpired in Pont-Sonde.”
On Thursday, the local media announced that thousands of Pont-Sonde residents were moving towards Saint-Marc, a seaside town.
Located at a crucial crossing that links Port-au-Prince, the capital, to the north, Pont-Sonde is a prominent rice producer situated in the breadbasket Artibonite region of Haiti.
Artibonite has witnessed some of the deadliest violence outside of the capital, adding to an already dire food crisis where thousands of people in Port-au-Prince are starving to death and half the population suffers from severe food insecurity.
Jimmy “Barbeque” Cherizier, a gang leader who is the public face of an alliance of armed gangs in the capital, claimed in a video that the attack was part of a plot to stop Artibonite from providing food for the nation.
Despite the partial deployment of a UN-backed mission to assist the underfunded police in re-establishing order, the number of conflict-related internal displacements has risen above 700,000, nearly doubling in just six months.
The Haitian government requested the transformation of the entirely volunteer-run mission, which has only received a small portion of promised resources, into an official UN peacekeeping operation. China and Russia blocked that proposal at the UN Security Council.
Al-Kheetan spoke, demanding an immediate investigation and compensation for the victims. “We call for increased international financial and logistical assistance to the Multinational Security Support Mission in Haiti,” he said.
At the end of September, the UN estimated that 3,661 people had died in the conflict since January, or more than 13 people every day so far this year.
