The UN says that a Haitian gang killed at least 70 people, including three babies

A spokesman for the UN’s Human Rights Office said on Friday that armed members of the Gran Grif gang killed at least 70 people, including three babies, as they went through a Haitian town firing automatic weapons at the people who lived there.

A spokesperson for the government said in a statement, “We are horrified by the gang attacks on Thursday in the town of Pont-Sonde in Haiti’s Artibonite department.”

The attack in the early hours of Thursday hurt at least 16 more people badly. Two gang members were hurt when they opened fire on Haitian police, according to the UN. Gang members are said to have set fire to at least 45 homes and 34 cars, causing people to leave their homes.

Prime Minister Garry Conille said on X that this horrible crime against helpless women, men, and children was an attack not only on the victims but also on the whole country of Haiti.

“Security forces, backed by our international partners, are reinforcing their intervention.”

In an audio message posted on social media on Thursday, Gran Grif leader Luckson Elan, who was sanctioned by the U.N. last month, said that the attacks were the fault of the state and the people who were attacked. He said that the people who were attacked were not doing anything while police or vigilante groups killed his troops.

“People who live in Pont-Sonde are to blame.” “The government is to blame for what happened in Pont-Sonde,” he said.

Thursday, news outlets in the area said that thousands of people from Pont-Sonde were moving toward the beach town of Saint-Marc.

Pont-Sonde grows a lot of rice and is in the Artibonite area, which is Haiti’s breadbasket. It is also an important crossing point that leads from the capital, Port-au-Prince, to the north.

Artibonite has seen some of the worst violence outside of the capital. This has made the hunger problem even worse, as half of the population is now severely food insecure and thousands of people in Port-au-Prince are facing famine-level hunger.

In a video, gang boss Jimmy “Barbeque” Cherizier, who speaks for a group of armed gangs in the capital, said the attack was part of a plan to stop Artibonite from sending food to the country.

The number of people forced to leave their homes because of the conflict has risen to over 700,000, almost doubling in just six months, even though some of a U.N.-backed mission sent to help police with limited resources restore order has been partially deployed.

The government of Haiti asked that the mission, which is made up of volunteers and has only gotten a small amount of the money it was promised, be turned into a real U.N. peacekeeping operation. Russia and China spoke out against that plan at the U.N. Security Council.

Al-Kheetan said, “We call for increased international financial and logistical assistance to the Multinational Security Support Mission in Haiti.” He also called for an immediate investigation and compensation for the victims.

At the end of September, the U.N. said that 3,661 people had been killed in the war since January. That’s more than 13 people killed every day this year.