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06-10-2024
PORT-AU-PRINCE: At least 70 people including children have been killed after an armed gang attacked a small town in Haiti.
Sixteen people were seriously injured, according to the UN, as Gran Grif gang members rampaged through Pont-Sondé in the central Artibonite region about 71km (44 miles) north-west of the capital Port-au-Prince.
Video footage shows groups of people fleeing the violence on motorbikes and on foot. A government prosecutor described the attack as “a massacre”, reported the Associated Press.
Armed gangs have taken control of large parts of Haiti and a UN-backed policing mission, led by officers from Kenya, began in June in an attempt to wrest back control.
Gang members reportedly “set fire to at least 45 houses and 34 vehicles”, the UN has said.
Gran Grif is said to be one of the most violent of Haiti’s gangs. In January 2023 its members were accused of attacking a police station near Pont-Sondé and killing six officers. It is also blamed for forcing the closure of a hospital serving more than 700,000 people.
The gang has about 100 members and has been accused of crimes including murder, rape, robberies and kidnappings, according to a UN report cited by media. Both its founder and current leader are subject to US sanctions.
Thursday’s gang rampage comes almost a month after the Haitian authorities expanded a state of emergency to cover the whole of the country.
Prime Minister Garry Conille has vowed to crack down on the gangs, with the UN saying a “robust use of force” is needed.
It has approved the policing mission made up of 2,500 officers from various countries including 1,000 pledged by Kenya.
Their deployment has been authorized for one year, with a review to be held after nine months.
Haiti’s government has taken a key step towards holding long-delayed elections with the creation of a body which will oversee the polls.
The nine-member provisional electoral council – set up on Wednesday has been tasked with organizing elections by February 2026.
The last time Haitians voted someone into power was in 2016.
Since then, armed gangs have seized control of almost the entire capital, Port-au-Prince, as well as large swathes of rural areas of Haiti.
So far, seven members of the provisional electoral council (CEP) have been named.
Among them are representatives of the media, academia, trade unions, and religious groups. The creation of the CEP comes less than two weeks after a visit to Port-au-Prince by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who had urged Haiti’s provisional government to move forward with the electoral process.
Blinken said setting up an electoral council was a “critical next step”.
Presidential elections were last held in Haiti in 2016, when Jovenel Moïse of the Tet Kale party was elected for a five-year term.
Since Moïse’s murder by Colombian mercenaries in July 2021, the post of president has been vacant.
In the following years, Haiti was governed by Ariel Henry, the man whom President Moïse had nominated as his prime minister shortly before he was killed but when Henry left for a summit in Guyana on 25 February 2024, gangs seized the international airport in Port-au-Prince and prevented him from returning. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
