By Harold Isaac
(Reuters) -Around 180 people were killed over the weekend in Haiti’s Cite Soleil area, Haiti’s prime minister’s office said on Monday, after attacks that an NGO said were ordered by a gang leader who suspected his child had been made ill using witchcraft.
“A red line has been crossed,” the office said in a statement, adding it would “mobilize all forces to track down and annihilate” those responsible, including Wharf Jeremie gang leader Monel “Mikano” Felix, whom it accused of planning the attack.
It said the victims were mostly elderly.
The National Human Rights Defense Network (RNDDH), an NGO in Haiti that monitors state institutions and promotes human rights education, said on Sunday at least 110 people – all aged over 60 – had been killed in Cite Soleil over the weekend.
It later said the death toll could be higher and cited witnesses as saying that “mutilated bodies were burned in the streets, including several young individuals who were killed attempting to save residents.”
RNDDH said Felix had ordered the violence after his child became sick, and after seeking advice from a voodoo priest who accused elderly people in the area of harming the child through witchcraft. The group said Felix’s child had died on Saturday afternoon.
Reuters was not able to independently verify the events outlined by RNDDH. Felix did not immediately comment on the accusations.
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.
Tight gang control, including the restriction of mobile phone use, has limited residents’ ability to share information about the massacre.
The government, riven with political infighting, has struggled to contain gangs’ growing power in and around the capital. The armed groups are accused of indiscriminate killings, gang rapes, ransom kidnappings and fueling critical food shortages.
In October, the Gran Grif gang took responsibility for the killing of at least 115 people in Pont-Sonde, a town in Haiti’s breadbasket Artibonite region. They said it was retaliation for residents helping a self-defense group hinder their road toll operations.
CALLS FOR U.N. PEACEKEEPERS
A U.N.-backed security mission was requested by Haiti in 2022 and approved a year later but so far has just partially deployed and remains deeply under-resourced.
Haitian leaders have called for the Kenyan-led Multinational Security Support 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.
Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for the U.N. Secretary-General, said the weekend’s death count was at least 184, including 127 elderly people.
“The Secretary-General reiterates his pressing call to Member States to provide the Multinational Security Support mission the financial and logistical support required to successfully assist the Haitian National Police,” he said.
A White House security spokesperson echoed the call for urgent international support for the mission and said the United States was “appalled.”
Dujarric also called for an acceleration of the political transition within Haiti. Haiti’s transitional government has said it plans to hold long-awaited elections in 2025, provided there is sufficient security for a free and fair vote.
The security situation has, however, continued to deteriorate, and many countries have yet to deliver on pledges of support.
Volker Turk, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, urged countries to improve efforts to stop arms trafficking to Haiti. The U.N. estimates the gangs’ increasingly modern arsenals are largely trafficked from the United States.
“These latest killings bring the death toll just this year in Haiti to a staggering 5,000 people,” he said.
(Reporting by Harold Isaac in Port-au-Prince; Additional reporting by Emma Farge in Geneva, Natalia Siniawski in Gdansk Kanishka Singh in Washington and Michelle Nichols at the United Nations, Writing by Sarah Morland; Editing by Timothy Heritage, Chizu Nomiyama and Rosalba O’Brien)
