Recent gangland madness has turned Haiti streets into killing fields.
Gang members carrying automatic rifles stormed through Pont-Sonde, in the agricultural region of Artibonite in western Haiti, killing at least 70 people and forcing over 6,000 to flee.
The upheaval continued with more people severely injured in the attack in the early hours of Thursday, October 3.
According to the U.N. migration agency, about 6,270 people had fled their homes due to the attacks.
It said most of these are being sheltered by families living in nearby Saint-Marc and other towns, while others are staying in makeshift camps.
Meanwhile, 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.
A video shared online shows pedestrians running for dear lives alongside bike riders who were also trying to escape.
The gang members set fire to dozens of homes and vehicles, local authorities said.
Reacting to the tragic incident, Prime Minister Garry Conille said on X, “This odious crime against defenceless women, men, and children is not only an attack against victims but against the entire Haitian nation,” adding that security forces were reinforcing the area.
Also, 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 gang did not meet any resistance,” Bertide Horace, a spokesperson from the Dialogue and Reconciliation Commission to Save the Artibonite Valley said, adding that police officers remained in their station, perhaps thinking they would be outgunned by the gang members.
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,” he said.
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.
