Even in a nation used to violent outbursts, there was broad astonishment when gang members wielding automatic weapons surged through a village in Haiti’s key breadbasket area, killing at least 70 and forcing nearly 6,000 others to escape.
Further serious injuries were caused by the attack that occurred early on Thursday in Pont-Sonde, in the agricultural area of Artibonite in western Haiti. Leader of the Gran Grif gang Luckson Elan claimed responsibility for the massacre, claiming it was carried out in retaliation for the civilians’ lack of resistance while security forces and vigilante groups killed his soldiers.
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According to the U.N. migration agency, 6,270 individuals have left their homes as a result of the attacks. While some are sleeping in improvised camps, the majority are being housed by families in the neighboring towns of Saint-Marc.
In one of the worst attacks in recent memory on the Caribbean island that has witnessed several killings and scant punishment for their victims, the gang members set fire to dozens of homes and cars, according to local officials.
Garry Conille, the prime minister, stated on X that security personnel were bolstering the region, “This odious crime against defenseless women, men, and children is not only an attack against victims but against the entire Haitian nation.”
Reporters were informed by a national police spokeswoman in Haiti on October 5, 2024, the night that the Artibonite department’s director of police had been removed.
“For now, reinforcements are at the location to contain the situation, and security forces are in control,” the spokesperson remarked.
The deaths are the most recent indication of a battle that is becoming worse in Haiti, where armed gangs are strengthening their hold over most of the country’s capital, Port-au-Prince, and causing hundreds of thousands of people to become homeless and hungry. Promised foreign assistance has not materialized, and neighboring countries have repatriated migrants.
“The gang did not meet any resistance,” Reporters were informed by Bertide Horace, a spokesman for the Dialogue and Reconciliation Commission to Save the Artibonite Valley, that police personnel stayed in their station, maybe believing that the rival gang members would outgun them.
Two of Horace’s family members were hurt in the attack, she added, and an armored vehicle stationed in neighboring Verrettes also failed to mobilize.
Horace claimed that when gang members moved from home to house, many victims were shot in the head, “They were left to shoot anybody, everybody was running everywhere. They were walking, shooting people, killing people, burning people, burning homes, burning cars.”
According to rights group RNDDH, the death toll was probably greater because entire families had been destroyed.
The report stated, “At the time of writing, corpses are strewn on the ground as their loved ones have not yet been able to recover them.”
The town’s citizens helped a vigilante organization that stopped the gang from extorting money on the national highway that passes through it, and for the last two months, whispers had been spreading about possible slaughter as payback.
“If funds allocated to the intelligence service of various state institutions had been used effectively, the Pont-Sonde massacre could have been avoided,” it stated.
The deadliest violence outside of the city has occurred in the Artibonite, and locals have long demanded greater security. Many Pont-Sonde inhabitants fled to Saint-Marc, where the public hospital, which already lacks resources, is having difficulty caring for the injured.
Based in the region, the Gran Grif gang has been charged with numerous kidnappings, rapes, killings, hijackings, driving farmers off their property, and recruiting children. The U.N. sanctions list included Elan last month.
Elan attributed his gang’s attack on the victims of the town and the state to an audio recording that was circulated on social media.
The U.N. claims that there has been no advancement in the cases of any mass murders that have occurred since 2021 and other significant massacres that have occurred since 2017.
There are claims that police have participated in several mass murders. The U.N. accused former police officer and gang leader Jimmy “Barbeque” Cherizier of organizing and participating in the 2018 massacre of 71 people in the port-side La Saline area of the city.
Situated in the heart of Haiti’s breadbasket, Pont-Sonde is a significant rice grower.
The World Food Program has attributed the region’s gang activity, which includes extorting farmers, stealing crops, and evicting laborers—to the sharp rise in food costs and shortages that have sent thousands of people in Port-au-Prince to starvation.
Despite the limited implementation of a long-delayed U.N.-backed mission designated to assist the under-resourced police in restoring orders, the number of people internally displaced by violence has climbed above 700,000, virtually tripling in six months.
As gangs obstructed the delivery of humanitarian material on Friday, the U.N. refugee agency issued a dire warning about catastrophic shortages of food and medical supplies.
Only a small portion of the resources promised to Haiti have been delivered thus far and attempts to establish an official U.N. peacekeeping force have been met with resistance. While other nations made official promises, just about 400 officers—mostly from Kenya—have deployed to date.
The United Nations estimates that 3,661 people have died because of gang violence since January, and it believes that most of the guns used by the gangs are trafficked from the United States. Meanwhile, neighboring countries like the Dominican Republic and the United States have continued to deport migrants back to Haiti. A spokesman for U.N. chief Antonio Guterres has lately repeated calls for increased support to the mission.
