84 killed in Haiti capital violence over weekend: UN rights chief

Geneva (RSS/AFP): The United Nations rights chief said Monday that 184 people had been killed over the weekend in the Haitian capital during a spike in gang violence.

‘Just this past weekend, at least 184 people were killed in violence orchestrated by the leader of a powerful gang in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, in the Cite Soleil area,’ rights commissioner Volker Turk told reporters in Geneva, ‘These latest killings bring the death toll just this year in Haiti to a staggering 5,000 people.’

Insecurity in Haiti, already dire after decades of chronic political instability, escalated further in late February when armed groups launched coordinated attacks in the capital, saying they wanted to overthrow then-prime minister Ariel Henry. Gangs now control 80 percent of Port-au-Prince, and despite a Kenyan-led police support mission backed by the UN and the United States, violence has continued to soar.

In November, the UN said the verified death toll from gang violence so far this year was 4,544 — though the real toll “is likely higher still”.

Particularly violent acts target women and girls, and victims have been mutilated with machetes, stoned, decapitated, burned or buried alive. More than 700,000 people have fled the horror, half of them children, according to the International Organization for Migration.