A woman runs for cover amid gunfire during clashes between police and gangs in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday. Gang members killed at least 184 people, mostly elderly, over the weekend
Volker Turk, human rights chief for the United Nations, said 184 people were killed.
“Just this past weekend, at least 184 people were killed in violence orchestrated by the leader of a powerful gang in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, in the Cite Soleil area,” Turk said, according to CBS.
“These latest killings bring the death toll just this year in Haiti to a staggering 5,000 people,” he said.
The office of Haiti’s prime minister said the gang leader believed his child was sickened by witchcraft, according to Reuters.
“A red line has been crossed,” the office said in a statement.
The statement said the office would “mobilize all forces to track down and annihilate” the people responsible, naming Wharf Jeremie gang leader Monel “Mikano” Felix, who the office said planned the deaths.
The National Human Rights Defense Network, a non-governmental organization, said at least 110 people over age 60 were killed in one spree.
The group cited witnesses reporting that “mutilated bodies were burned in the streets, including several young individuals who were killed attempting to save residents.”
Felix had ordered the attacks upon being told by a voodoo priest elderly people in the area harmed the child using witchcraft. The child died Saturday afternoon.
The Cooperative for Peace and Development said the gang leader wanted to punish those who harmed his son, according to NPR.
“He decided to cruelly punish all elderly people and (Vodou) practitioners who, in his imagination, would be capable of casting a bad spell on his son,” the group said.
“The crisis in Haiti has reached catastrophic levels with allied criminal groups intensifying large-scale, coordinated attacks on the population and key state infrastructure,” Human Rights Watch said Monday.
The group said “many Haitians live with the constant fear of being killed, raped, kidnapped, or forcibly recruited even as they struggle every day to find adequate food, water, and health care to survive.”
The incident is the latest massacre in Haiti.
On Oct. 3, 115 people were killed in Pont-Sondé, according to the BBC.
In that case, the Gran Grif gang slaughtered local residents after learning some of them had joined a vigilante group to push back against the power of the gang.
https://www.westernjournal.com/nearly-200-massacred-haiti-witch-doctors-advice-violent-gang-leader/
