Pont-Sonde. The death toll in last week’s brutal gang attack on a small town in central Haiti has risen to 115, a local official told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
The attack on the inhabitants of Pont-Sondé, carried out on October 3, was one of the worst massacres in Haiti’s recent history.
Myriam Fièvre, mayor of the nearby town of Saint-Marc, said Wednesday that the death toll had risen to 115 and would likely continue to rise because authorities are still searching for bodies and have been unable to access certain areas of the city.
“We are working to guarantee the protection of the population,” he declared in a telephone interview.
The UN had previously said that at least 70 people were killed last Thursday after the Gran Grif gang invaded the town located in the central Artibonite region.
The victims included babies, young mothers and elderly people, and the gang arrived in Pont-Sondé via canoes to take residents by surprise, according to a local human rights group.
Survivors have questioned why authorities did nothing to prevent the attack because the gang had warned in a video posted on social media that it planned to attack Pont-Sondé.
A day after the attack, Haitian officials replaced the police commissioner charged with overseeing the Artibonite region, which has seen a rise in gang violence in recent years, with at least 20 criminal groups currently operating. in the area, according to the UN.
More than 6,200 survivors have fled Pont-Sondé and temporarily settled in the coastal city of Saint-Marc and surrounding areas.
Most of them are staying with relatives, but more than 750 people have nowhere to go and are sleeping on the floor of a church, a school and a public square in Saint-Marc, according to the International Organization for UN Migrations.
As Saint-Marc battles the sudden influx of people, Fièvre warned that the Grand Grif gang is infiltrating surrounding communities after attacking Pont-Sondé.
The Haitian National Human Rights Defense Network has stated that the gang was upset that a local self-defense group was attempting to limit its activities in Pont-Sondé and prevent it from benefiting from an improvised toll it had recently established nearby.
Gran Grif has approximately 100 members and has been accused of crimes such as murder, rape, robberies and kidnappings. It was formed after a former lawmaker Prophane Victor began giving weapons to young people almost a decade ago to ensure their election and control of the region, according to the UN.
Last month, the United States sanctioned Victor and Gran Grif leader Luckson Elan. The latter was also sanctioned by the UN Security Council, which noted that Gran Grif is the “largest and most powerful” gang in Artibonite, where it committed nine mass kidnappings from October 2023 to January 2024, including that of 157 people.
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)
{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};
if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;
n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,’script’,
‘
fbq(‘init’, ‘133913093805922’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘PageView’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘Contact’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘Donate’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘FindLocation’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘Lead’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘Search’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘Subscribe’, {value: ‘0.00’, currency: ‘MXN’, predicted_ltv: ‘0.00’});
fbq(‘track’, ‘ViewContent’);
#Death #toll #rises #gang #attack #Pont #Sondé #Haiti
–
