At least 110 people dead in Haiti capital in a massacre ordered by a gang leader: Report

At least 110 people were killed over the weekend in Haiti’s Cite Soleil slum when a gang leader targeted elderly people he suspected of causing his child’s illness through witchcraft, the National Human Rights Defense Network (RNDDH) said on Sunday.

All the victims were aged over 60, the rights group said.

Wharf Jeremie gang leader Monel “Mikano” Felix ordered the massacre after his child became sick, RNDDH said, saying that he sought advice from a Voodoo priest who accused elderly people in the area of harming the child through witchcraft.

Gang members killed at least 60 people on Friday and 50 on Saturday using machetes and knives, it said.

Cite Soleil, a densely populated slum by the port of the capital Port-au-Prince, is among the poorest and most violent areas of Haiti.

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Tight gang control, including the restriction of mobile phone use, has limited residents’ ability to share information about the massacre.

Felix, who heads the Wharf Jeremie gang, was in 2022 banned from entering neighboring Dominican Republic.

Felix’s child died on Saturday afternoon, RNDDH said.

The United Nations in October estimated that Felix’s gang numbered some 300 people and also operated around nearby Fort Dimanche and La Saline.

La Saline was in November 2018 the site of the massacre of at least 71 civilians, while hundreds of homes were set on fire.

Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier, the face of the Viv Ansanm alliance of gangs across Port-au-Prince, has been sanctioned by the United Nations on charges of planning the La Saline massacre while he was still a police officer, among other crimes.

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In October, at least 115 people were massacred in Pont-Sonde, a town in Haiti’s breadbasket Artibonite region, in what the Gran Grif gang said was retaliation for residents working with a self-defense group hindering their road toll operations.

The government, wracked by political infighting, has struggled to contain armed gangs’ growing power in and around the capital.

Haitian authorities had in 2022 requested international security support for local police, but the mission - based on voluntary contributions - that the United Nations approved in 2023 has only partially deployed and is severely under-resourced.

Haitian leaders have since called for the mission to be converted into a U.N. peacekeeping force to ensure it is better supplied, but the plan stalled amid opposition from China and Russia in the Security Council.