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Haitians flee their homes to escape gang violence. (Photo via CMC)
PORT AU PRINCE, Haiti, CMC – Haitian authorities say they are worried that the death toll from last weekend’s massacre in Pont-Sondé, a community near Saint-Marc in the lower Artibonite department, could increase, as gang violence continues spreading across the French-speaking Caribbean Community (CARICOM) country with little to no state resistance.
The authorities said that at least 12 people were killed, several others injured and hundreds of families displaced after their homes were torched in a gang attack in Pont-Sondé, last weekend.
“The population cannot live, cannot work, cannot move,” one of Haiti’s police unions, SPNH-17, said on the social media platform, X.
“Losing the country’s 2 largest departments – West and Artibonite – is the greatest security failure in modern Haitian history.”
Many survivors fled to the coastal town of Saint-Marc, where hundreds of angry people on Monday demanded that the government take action against gangs who have repeatedly attacked Haiti’s central region.
Residents, who were attacked by the gangs have identified them to being members of the Gran Grif gang. They said among those killed were six employees of the Artibonite Valley Development Organization.
The attack followed the October 3, 2024, massacre in the same area, during which Gran Grif gunmen armed with automatic rifles slaughtered at least 70 people and torched 45 homes, according to the UN human rights office.
Witnesses said Gran Grif gunmen swept through several neighborhoods, firing into homes and executing residents attempting to flee. Videos shared by locals show families running under gunfire and gang members celebrating afterward
The Haitian National Police (PNH), the Presidential Transition Council (CPT) and the government of Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, have released little or no information on the attack.
But CPT member, Fritz Alphonse Jean, who is under U.S. sanctions for alleged gang ties, said he as speaking “as a citizen,” criiticised the authorities for being “unable to address the population’s problems for over a year.”
“Blood continues to flow, and lives and property continue to be lost,” Jean wrote on X.
The attacks in central Haiti were broadcast live on social meda by the gangs.
Since 2022, Haiti’s gang violence has left over 16,000 dead and displaced 1.3 million, half of them children. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) says as many as 500,000 illegal guns are in circulation, most held by gangs controlling 90% of the capital and expanding their grip on several provincial towns.
