The violent attack of a gang last week in the locality of Pont-Sonondé, in Haitileft 109 dead and more than 40 injured, a local official said on Wednesday to a radio station.
Saint Marc District Deputy Deputy Walter Montas told Magik 9 Radio that there has been a “fragile calm” in the Pont-Sonondé sector since the arrival of police reinforcement.
During the night of October 3 and in the early hours of the 4th, members of an armed group fired with automatic rifles against the residents of this locality about 100 km northwest of Port-au-Princewhere they burned dozens of houses and vehicles.
An UN report had initially reported at least 70 deaths, including women and children.
The Haitian government condemned the “indescribable brutality” of the attack and announced the sending of Haitian units specialized against gangs and members of Kenya’s multinational force.
Since last summer Boreal, a multinational Mission to Support Security in Haiti has begun to arrive in the Caribbean country plagued by violence, which has been through a serious humanitarian, economic and political crisis for years.
In a statement, Haitian police said on Wednesday that he highlighted this mission to “dismantle all gang outbreaks” in the articibonite region, particularly “Gran Griffe”, responsible for last week’s attack.
This armed group, which specializes in theft of trucks and extortive kidnappings, is led by Luckson Elan, sanctioned by the United States for his participation in serious human rights violations.
At least 3,661 people have been murdered since January in Haiti, according to the end of September quoted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNUDH).
The UN requested “an increase in financial assistance and international logistics” to the multinational force, composed mainly of Kenyan police and who struggled to produce concrete results since its arrival.
The wave of violence and a precarious humanitarian situation forced more than 700,000 people, half of them children, to flee their homes to seek refuge in other areas of the country, according to the latest numbers of the International Organization for Migration (IM).
