The UN now says 207 people were killed in a slum area of the capital, Port-au-Prince, earlier this month.
The United Nations has raised the death toll from a recent massacre in Haiti, saying its investigation found 207 people. killed by a gangincluding dozens of elders and Vodou religious leaders.
In a report published on Monday, the UN office in Haiti detailed events that took place between December 6 and 11 in the Jeremie Wharf Community of Cite Soleil, a coastal slum in the capital, Port-au-Prince.
The gang took people from their homes and places of worship, interrogated them and then “executed” them with bullets and machetes before burning their bodies and throwing them into the sea, the report found.
Earlier this month, human rights groups in Haiti had estimated that more than 100 people were killed what happened, but a new UN investigation concluded that 134 men and 73 women were killed.
“We can't pretend that nothing happened,” said María Isabel Salvador, the UN secretary-general's special representative in Haiti.
“I call on the Haitian justice system to thoroughly investigate these terrible crimes and to arrest and punish the perpetrators, as well as those who support them,” she said in the statement.
The Haitian government acknowledged the killing of elderly people in a statement issued earlier this month, and vowed to prosecute those responsible for this act of “bloodless flesh”. speech”.
The UN Security Council issued a statement on Monday condemning the latest gang killings and expressing “deep concern” about the crisis in Haiti, highlighting food insecurity and recruiting a gang of children.
Insecurity and loneliness
The insecurity has decreased so far in Haiti that the The UN ordered recently some of their workers to leave the country or move from the capital to safer areas.
The country is increasingly isolated after the Port-au-Prince international airport was closed to commercial travelers planes hit by gunfire.
The UN is in talks about what steps should be taken in Haiti after an international security mission led by 400 Kenyan police struggled to restore law and order.
One option being considered is a return to full-scale peacekeeping operations, despite mixed results with previous deployments, including the “stabilization” mission, MINUSTAH, which ran from 2004 until he left in 2017.
'King Micanor'
Human rights groups in Haiti said the Wharf Jeremie the killing began after the son of Micanor Altes, a local gang leader, dies of an illness.
Witnesses told the groups that Altes, alias “King Micanor”, accused people in the area of causing his son's illness by casting a bad spell on him.
In a report on Monday, the UN said that people were found in their homes and in a place of worship by the Altes gang, where they were first interrogated and then taken to a site where they would be killed.
The killings are the latest humanitarian disaster in Haiti, where gang violence has escalated since the country's president, Jovenel Moise, was killed in 2021 coup attempt.
The Caribbean nation is currently governed by a transitional council that includes representatives from the business community, civil society and political parties, but its government does not control many areas of the capital, and groups are always fighting over ports, highways and neighborhoods.
According to the UN, more than 5,358 people have been killed in gang wars in Haiti this year and another 2,155 injured. More than 17,000 people have been killed or injured in gang-related violence in Haiti since the start of 2022.
