PORT-AU-PRINCE, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Gang members brandishing automatic rifles stormed through a town in Haiti's main breadbasket region, killing at least 70 and forcing over 6,000 to flee, causing widespread shock even in a country grown accustomed to outbreaks of violence.
More people were severely injured in the attack in the early hours of Thursday at Pont-Sonde, in the agricultural region of Artibonite in western Haiti. Gran Grif gang leader Luckson Elan took responsibility for the massacre, saying it was in retaliation for civilians remaining passive while police and vigilante groups killed his soldiers.
Some 6,270 people had fled their homes due to the attacks, the U.N. migration agency said. Most of these are being sheltered by families living in nearby Saint-Marc and other towns, while others are staying in makeshift camps.
The gang members set fire to dozens of homes and vehicles, local authorities said, in one of the deadliest attacks in recent years in the Caribbean nation that has seen many massacres and little justice for their victims.
"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, adding that security forces were reinforcing the area.
A spokesperson for Haiti's national police told Reuters on Friday evening that the director of police in charge of the Artibonite department had been replaced.
"For now, reinforcements are at the location to contain the situation and security forces are in control," the spokesperson said.
The killings are the latest sign of a worsening conflict in Haiti, where armed gangs control most of the capital Port-au-Prince and are expanding to nearby regions, fuelling hunger and making hundreds of thousands homeless. Promised international support continues to lag and nearby nations have deported migrants back to the country.
"The gang did not meet any resistance," Bertide Horace, spokesperson from the Dialogue and Reconciliation Commission to Save the Artibonite Valley, told Reuters, adding that police officers remained in their station, perhaps thinking they would be outgunned by the gang members.
An armored truck stationed in nearby Verrettes also failed to mobilize, said Horace, adding that two of her own family members were injured during the attack.
Many victims were shot in the head as gang members went house to house, Horace said. "They were left to shoot anybody, everybody was running everywhere. They were walking, shooting people, killing people, burning people, burning homes, burning cars."
Rights organization RNDDH said the death toll was likely higher as entire families had been wiped out. "At the time of writing, corpses are strewn on the ground as their loved ones have not yet been able to recover them," it said in a report.
RNDDH said rumors had been circulating for two months about a potential massacre in retaliation for residents' help for a vigilante group that was preventing the gang from extorting money on the national highway through the town.
"If funds allocated to the intelligence service of various state institutions had been used effectively, the Pont-Sonde massacre could have been avoided," it said.
Photo from Reuters
