The tally of victims killed in this week’s brutal attack on a small town in central Haiti by heavily armed gang members has risen to at least 70, the U.N. human rights office said Friday.
Bodies lay strewn on the streets of Pont-Sondé following Thursday’s attack in the Artibonite region, many of them killed by a shot to the head, Bertide Horace, spokeswoman for the Commission for Dialogue, Reconciliation and Awareness to Save the Artibonite, told Magik 9 radio station.
Initial estimates put the number of those killed at 20 people, but activists and government officials have been gradually accessing areas of the town and discovering more bodies. Among the victims is a young mother, her newborn baby and a midwife, Horace said.
“We are horrified by Thursday’s gang attacks,” the U.N. Human Rights Office of the Commissioner said in a statement. It said 10 women and three infants were among those killed, and at least 16 others seriously injured, including two gang members hit during an exchange with police.
The office said Gran Grif gang members reportedly set fire to at least 45 homes and 34 cars.
The motive remains unclear for what was one of the biggest massacres in the central region in recent years. Similar attacks have taken place in the capital of Port-au-Prince, 80% of which is controlled by gangs, and they typically are linked to turf wars, with gang members targeting civilians in areas controlled by rivals. But Pont-Sondé is considered part of the Gran Grif gang’s own territory.
The gang was created after former Haitian legislator Prophane Victor began arming young men in the area to secure his election and control over the Artibonite region nearly a decade ago, according to a U.N. report. Victor and the leader of Gran Grif, Luckson Elan, were sanctioned by the U.S. last month.
The gang attacked Pont-Sondé before dawn on Thursday and encountered little resistance, Horace said, though she said that contrary to some reports, police officers did try to repel the gang.
“The gang had total control of the area,” Horace said.
Haiti’s government deployed an elite police unit based in the capital of Port-au-Prince to Pont-Sondé following the attack and sent medical supplies to help the area’s lone hospital, which is overwhelmed by dozens of people injured.
“This heinous crime, perpetrated against defenseless women, men, and children, is not only an attack on these victims, but on the entire Haitian nation,” Prime Minister Garry Conille said in a statement Friday.
Gang violence across Artibonite, which produces much of Haiti’s food, has increased in recent years.
In January 2023, Gran Grif was accused of attacking a police station in Liancourt, near Pont-Sondé, and killing at least six officers. Violence unleashed by the gang also forced the closure of a hospital in February 2023 that serves more than 700,000 people.