By Harold Isaac and Sarah Morland
PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) -Gang members brandishing automatic rifles stormed through a town in Haiti's main breadbasket region, killing at least 70 and forcing over 6,000 to flee, causing widespread shock even in a country grown accustomed to outbreaks of violence.
More people were severely injured in the attack in the early hours of Thursday at Pont-Sonde, in the agricultural region of Artibonite in western Haiti. Gran Grif gang leader Luckson Elan took responsibility for the massacre, saying it was in retaliation for civilians remaining passive while police and vigilante groups killed his soldiers.
Some 6,270 people had fled their homes due to the attacks, the U.N. migration agency said. Most of these are being sheltered by families living in nearby Saint-Marc and other towns, while others are staying in makeshift camps.
The gang members set fire to dozens of homes and vehicles, local authorities said, in one of the deadliest attacks in recent years in the Caribbean nation that has seen many massacres and little justice for their victims.
"This odious crime against defenseless women, men and children is not only an attack against victims but against the entire Haitian nation," Prime Minister Garry Conille said on X, adding that security forces were reinforcing the area.
A spokesperson for Haiti's national police told Reuters on Friday evening that the director of police in charge of the Artibonite department had been replaced.
"For now, reinforcements are at the location to contain the situation and security forces are in control," the spokesperson said.
The killings are the latest sign of a worsening conflict in Haiti, where armed gangs control most of the capital Port-au-Prince and are expanding to nearby regions, fuelling hunger and making hundreds of thousands homeless. Promised international support continues to lag and nearby nations have deported migrants back to the country.
"The gang did not meet any resistance," Bertide Horace, spokesperson from the Dialogue and Reconciliation Commission to Save the Artibonite Valley, told Reuters, adding that police officers remained in their station, perhaps thinking they would be outgunned by the gang members.
An armored truck stationed in nearby Verrettes also failed to mobilize, said Horace, adding that two of her own family members were injured during the attack.
Many victims were shot in the head as gang members went house to house, Horace said. "They were left to shoot anybody, everybody was running everywhere. They were walking, shooting people, killing people, burning people, burning homes, burning cars."
Rights organization RNDDH said the death toll was likely higher as entire families had been wiped out. "At the time of writing, corpses are strewn on the ground as their loved ones have not yet been able to recover them," it said in a report.
RNDDH said rumors had been circulating for two months about a potential massacre in retaliation for residents' help for a vigilante group that was preventing the gang from extorting money on the national highway through the town.
"If funds allocated to the intelligence service of various state institutions had been used effectively, the Pont-Sonde massacre could have been avoided," it said.
PARALYZED JUSTICE
The Artibonite has been the scene of the worst violence outside the capital, and residents have long called for more protection. Many residents of Pont-Sonde fled to Saint-Marc, where the already under-resourced public hospital is struggling to treat the injured.
The Gran Grif gang is based in the area and has been accused of mass kidnappings, rapes, murders, hijackings and forcing farmers off their lands, as well as child recruitment. Elan was added to the U.N. sanctions list last month.
In an audio message shared on social media on Thursday, Elan blamed the town's victims and the state for his gang's attack.
According to the U.N., no progress has been made in the cases of any mass killings committed since 2021, as well as several major massacres since 2017.
Police are alleged to have taken part in some mass killings. Gang leader Jimmy "Barbeque" Cherizier, a former police officer, was accused by the U.N. of planning and taking part in the 2018 killing of 71 civilians in the capital's port-side neighborhood of La Saline.
LONG-DELAYED SUPPORT
Pont-Sonde is a major rice producer located in Haiti's breadbasket region.
The World Food Programme has blamed gangs operating in the region, extorting farmers, stealing crops and forcing workers off their lands, for spiraling food prices and shortages that have pushed 5 million into severe food insecurity and thousands in Port-au-Prince to famine-level hunger.
The number of people internally displaced by the conflict has meanwhile surged past 700,000, nearly doubling in six months despite the partial deployment of a long-delayed U.N.-backed mission mandated to help under-resourced police restore order.
The U.N. refugee agency on Friday warned of disastrous shortages in food and medical supplies as gangs blocked the transport of humanitarian aid.
Haiti has so far received a fraction of the resources it was promised and been frustrated in efforts to bring in a formal U.N. peacekeeping mission. Several countries made formal pledges, but so far only around 400 officers have deployed, mostly from Kenya.
A spokesperson for U.N. chief Antonio Guterres on Friday reiterated calls for more support to the mission.
The U.N. estimated at the end of September that 3,661 people had been killed in the gang violence since January. It believes the gangs are armed largely by guns trafficked from the United States.
Nearby countries including the Dominican Republic and U.S. have meanwhile continued to deport migrants back to Haiti.