- Human rights group says 70 dead, authorities say 16.
- The human rights group estimates that there are 6,000 people displaced by the violence.
- The UN Secretary General’s office calls for a thorough investigation.
At least 70 people were killed and 30 wounded in an attack near Petite-Rivière in Haiti’s breadbasket Artibonite region, a human rights group said on Monday, far higher than official estimates, which put the death toll at around 16.
Residents and officials told local media that the attack began in the early hours of Sunday in rural communities around Jean-Denis and continued into the early hours of Monday, when gang members stormed the area and set houses on fire.
Rights group Defenseurs Plus said it estimated the violence had displaced 6,000 people. The UN estimated that more than 2,000 people left their homes in the days following raids by armed gangs nearby.
Police initially reported 16 dead and 10 injured, while a preliminary report by civil protection authorities indicated that 17 had been killed and 19 injured, mostly men.
A spokesman for the UN Secretary-General told a news conference that the organization’s office in Haiti, BINUH, was closely monitoring events and that estimates ranged from 10 to 80 people killed. He called for a thorough investigation.
“The lack of a security response and the abandonment of Artibonite in the hands of armed groups demonstrate a complete abdication of responsibility by the authorities,” Defenseurs Plus said in a joint statement with the Collective to Save Artibonite.
An audio message that circulated on social media was attributed to Grand Grif leader Luckson Elan. In the message, Elan appears to say that the attack was retaliation for attacks on his base in Savien by a rival armed group.
The department of Artibonite, a key agricultural area, has suffered some of the worst violence in Haiti. The gang conflict has spread beyond the capital, Port-au-Prince, despite more aggressive policing and promises of greater foreign support for Haiti’s security forces.
Operation in progress
Haiti’s National Police said they deployed three armored vehicles, which were slowed by holes the gang members had dug in the road. Authorities said the armed group was fleeing the area when police arrived and that several houses were already burned.
The injured were taken to a local hospital and the dead to two morgues, police said, adding that they have launched an operation to locate the gang members who fled.
Defenseurs Plus estimated that 50 houses were burned.
According to a recent UN report, nearly 20,000 people have been killed in Haiti since 2021, with the death toll rising each year as increasingly independent and powerful armed gangs have clashed with security forces and local vigilante groups.
Gran Grif and Viv Ansanm, which brings together hundreds of gangs in the capital, have been designated terrorist organizations by Washington. The groups have been accused of mass murder, gang rape, arson, theft and trafficking of weapons, drugs and organs.
This month, the United States offered a reward of up to $3 million for information about his financial activities.
The weekend attack marks the latest in a series of massacres in the area, largely attributed to the Great Grif. In October 2024, a Grand Grif attack on the nearby town of Pont-Sonde left 115 dead, as gunmen shot residents door to door.
More than 1.4 million people – about 12% of the Caribbean’s most populous nation – have been displaced by the conflict with armed gangs, worsening the economic crisis and access to food.
