‘They tried to murder everyone’: Haiti reels after deadly gang attack

More than 6,200 people are staying with relatives or in makeshift shelters after massacre in central Haiti town.

Survivors of a deadly gang attack in central Haiti last week have described waking up to gunfire and walking for hours in search of safety, as the country continues to grapple in the aftermath of the assault that killed at least 70 people.

Dozens of Gran Grif gang members armed with knives and assault rifles killed infants, women, the elderly and entire families in their attack last Thursday on Pont-Sonde, about 100km (62 miles) northwest of Port-au-Prince in the Artibonite region.

“They tried to murder everyone,” Jina Joseph, a survivor, told The Associated Press news agency.

Jameson Fermilus, who had crouched in a corridor next to his house as smoke and gunfire filled the air, was among thousands of survivors who walked for hours, looking for safety.

“We don’t know what we are going to do,” said another resident who joined them, 60-year-old Sonise Morino. “We have nowhere to go.”

The massacre has underscored the deadly violence and instability gripping Haiti, where powerful armed groups have carried out attacks and kidnappings across the capital of Port-au-Prince and in other parts of the country.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said at least 6,270 people were displaced in the attack on Pont-Sonde. The vast majority have sought refuge with relatives and friends in nearby communities.

Others with nowhere to go have crowded into a church, a school and a public plaza shaded by trees in the coastal city of Saint-Marc.

“These deaths are unimaginable,” Mayor Myriam Fievre said as she met with survivors.

The attack – retribution for self-defence groups trying to stop the gang from erecting a toll on a nearby road – was the largest massacre in central Haiti in recent years.

It came just days after the United Nations reported that at least 3,661 people had been killed in Haiti in the first half of 2024 amid the “senseless” gang violence that has engulfed the country.

“To those who sow terror, I say this: You will not break our will,” Haiti’s interim Prime Minister Garry Conille said in a statement following the Pont-Sonde attack.

“You will not subjugate this people who have always fought for their dignity and freedom. We will never abandon our right to live in peace, security and justice.”

More than 6,000 people have been displaced following armed attacks in Pont-Sondé, a locality in Haiti situated in the commune of Saint-Marc, in the Artibonite department.

The majority have taken shelter with relatives in nearby localities.

👉 https://t.co/oBLDDVMoWI pic.twitter.com/AhA3d8iW0H

— IOM Haiti (@IOMHaiti) October 5, 2024

Yet, despite the defiant rhetoric, Conille late last month acknowledged that Haiti was “nowhere near winning” the battle against the gangs.

The UN Security Council recently extended the mandate of a Kenya-led policing mission meant to help restore security in the Caribbean nation, but the force has struggled to wrest control from the gangs.

Funding for the deployment – formally known as the Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS) – has lagged, and a UN expert said last month that the force remains under-resourced.

Conille has travelled to Kenya and the United Arab Emirates this week to push for additional help.