At least 110 people, most of them elderly, were brutally murdered by gang members in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, according to a human rights group.
The National Network for the Defense of Human Rights (RNDDH) said a local gang leader targeted them after his son fell ill and subsequently died.
The gang leader reportedly consulted a voodoo priest who blamed elderly locals practicing “witchcraft” for the boy's mysterious illness.
The United Nations said the number of people killed in Haiti so far this year in escalating gang violence has reached “5,000.”
Warning: This story contains details that some readers may find disturbing
While details of the massacre are still unfolding, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk on Monday estimated the number of people killed over the weekend “in acts of violence orchestrated by a powerful gang leader” at 184.
The killings took place in the Cité Soleil neighborhood of the capital.
According to reports, gang members kidnapped dozens of residents over the age of 60 from their homes in the Jeremy Wharf area, arrested them and then shot or stabbed them to death with knives and machetes.
Residents reported seeing mutilated bodies burning in the streets.
RNDDH estimated that 60 people were killed on Friday while 50 others were arrested and killed on Saturday, after the gang leader's son died from his illness.
While RNDDH said all the victims were over 60 years old, another rights group said some young people who tried to protect the elderly were also killed.
Local media said that elderly people believed to be practicing sorcery were targeted because the gang leader was told that his son's illness was because of them.
Rights groups said the man who ordered the killing was Monel Felix, also known as Mecano.
Mecano is known to control Jeremy's Wharf, a strategic area in the capital's port.
According to Romain Le Cor Grandmaison, a Haiti expert at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Crime (GI-TOC), the area is small but difficult for security forces to penetrate.
Local media said the Meccano gang had prevented residents from leaving Jeremy's Wharf, so news of the deadly killings was slow to spread.
The group forms part of the Viv Ansanem gang alliance, which controls a large part of the Haitian capital.
Haiti has witnessed a wave of gang violence since the assassination of then-President Jovenel Moise in 2021.
Data collected by GI-TOC It appears that there was a decline in the murder rate between May and September of this year, after rival gangs reached an uneasy truce.
But attempts by gangs to expand their territory beyond their strongholds in the capital have led to particularly bloody incidents in the past two months, as ordinary residents rather than members of rival gangs have increasingly been targeted.
On October 3, 115 local residents were murdered in the small town of Pont-Sonde in the Artibonite department.
The Gran Greve gang reportedly carried out the massacre in retaliation for some residents joining a vigilante group to resist Gran Greve's attempts to blackmail local residents.
If confirmed, the death toll announced by the United Nations in this weekend's killings in Cité Soleil would make this the deadliest incident so far this year.
With gangs controlling an estimated 85% of the city of Port-au-Prince and vast swaths of the countryside, hundreds of thousands of Haitians were forced to flee their homes.
According to the International Organization for Migration, more than 700,000 people – half of them children – are internally displaced across the country.
Gang members often use sexual assault, including gang rape, to terrorize local residents.
In a report published two weeks ago“The rule of law in Haiti is so violated that members of criminal groups rape girls without fear of any consequences,” wrote Nathalie Cotrino, a researcher at Human Rights Watch.
Attempts by the Kenya-led Multinational Security Support Mission to quell the violence have so far failed.
The international police force arrived in Haiti in June to support the Haitian National Police, but it is underfunded and ill-equipped to confront heavily armed gangs.
On the other hand, the Transitional Presidential Council – the body created to organize elections and re-establish the democratic system – appears to be in a state of turmoil.
The Transitional Political Council replaced the interim prime minister last month and appears to have made little progress toward organizing elections.
“They rule over a mountain of ashes,” Romain Le Cour Grandmaison of GI-TOC wrote of the council in his report.
