Haiti gang kills 110 people accused of witchcraft

At slightest 110 mostly aged radical person been brutally murdered by pack members successful the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, according to a quality rights group.

The National Human Rights Defence Network (RNDDH) said a section pack person had targeted them aft his lad fell sick and subsequently died.

The pack person reportedly consulted a voodoo clergyman who blamed aged locals practising "witchcraft" for the boy's enigma illness.

The United Nations said the fig of radical killed successful Haiti truthful acold this twelvemonth successful spiralling pack unit had reached "a staggering 5,000".

Warning: This communicative contains details immoderate readers whitethorn find upsetting

While details from the massacre are inactive emerging, the UN's quality rights main Volker Türk connected Monday enactment the fig of radical killed implicit the play "in unit orchestrated by the person of a almighty gang" astatine 184.

The killings happened successful the Cité Soleil neighbourhood of the capital.

According to reports, pack members seized scores of residents aged implicit 60 from their homes successful the Wharf Jérémie area, rounded them up and past changeable oregon stabbed them to decease with knives and machetes.

Residents reported seeing mutilated bodies being burned successful the streets.

RNDDH estimated 60 were killed connected Friday portion different 50 were rounded up and murdered connected Saturday, aft the pack leader's lad had died of his illness.

While RNDDH said that each the victims were implicit 60, different rights radical said immoderate younger radical who had tried to support the aged had besides been killed.

Local media said that aged radical believed to beryllium practitioners of voodoo had been singled retired due to the fact that the pack person had been told his son's unwellness had been caused by them.

Rights groups said the antheral who had ordered the killings was Monel Felix, besides known arsenic Mikano.

Mikano is known to power Wharf Jérémie, a strategical country successful the larboard of the capital.

According to Romain Le Cour Grandmaison, a Haiti adept astatine the Global Initiative against Transnational Crime (GI-TOC), the country is tiny but hard for the information forces to penetrate.

Local media said that residents had been prevented from leaving Wharf Jérémie by Mikano's gang, truthful quality of the deadly killings was dilatory to spread.

The radical forms portion of the Viv Ansanm pack alliance, which controls overmuch of the Haitian capital.

Haiti has been engulfed successful a question of pack unit since the assassination successful 2021 of the then-president, Jovenel Moïse.

gathered by GI-TOC amusement determination was a diminution successful the execution complaint betwixt May and September of this year, aft rival gangs had reached an uneasy truce.

But attempts by the gangs to grow their territory beyond their strongholds successful the superior person led to peculiarly bloody incidents successful the past 2 months, with mean residents alternatively than rival pack members being progressively targeted.

On 3 October, 115 locals were killed successful the tiny municipality of Pont-Sondé successful the Artibonite department.

That massacre was reportedly carried retired by the Gran Grif pack successful retaliation for immoderate residents joining a vigilante radical to defy attempts by Gran Grif to extort locals.

If confirmed, the decease toll fixed by the UN for this weekend's killings successful Cité Soleil, would marque it the deadliest incidental truthful acold this year.

With gangs successful power of an estimated 85% of Port-au-Prince and progressively ample swathes of the countryside, hundreds of thousands of Haitians person been forced to fly their homes.

According to the International Organization for Migration, much than 700,000 radical - fractional of them children - are internally displaced crossed the country.

Gang members often usage intersexual abuse, including pack rape, to sow panic among the section population.

In a study published 2 weeks ago, Human Rights Watch researcher Nathalye Cotrino wrote that "the regularisation of instrumentality successful Haiti is truthful breached that members of transgression groups rape girls of women without fearing immoderate consequences".

Attempts by the Kenyan-led Multinational Security Support Mission to quell the unit person truthful acold failed.

The planetary constabulary unit arrived successful Haiti successful June to bolster the Haitian National Police but is underfunded and lacks the indispensable instrumentality to instrumentality connected the heavy equipped gangs.

Meanwhile, the Transitional Presidential Council (TPC) - the assemblage created to organise elections and re-establish antiauthoritarian bid - appears to beryllium successful turmoil.

The TPC replaced the interim premier curate past period and seems to person made small advancement towards organising elections.

"They reign implicit a upland of ashes," GI-TOC's Romain Le Cour Grandmaison writes of the assembly successful his report.