According to the United Nations and Haitian human-rights organizations, over 180 individuals were reportedly murdered in the capital of Haiti as a powerful warlord ordered the execution of elderly slum residents whom he suspected of having caused his son a severe illness through witchcraft.
The National Human Rights Defense Network, a Haitian rights organization, reported that gang boss Monel Felix instructed his followers to use guns, knives, and machetes to kill residents after he was informed by a voodoo priest that his son had contracted a fatal illness as a result of elderly individuals practicing sorcery.
The group stated that the ill infant passed away on Saturday as Felix’s gang committed the murders.
The chaos that has engulfed Haiti is underscored by the violence that occurred in Port-au-Prince over the weekend.
Here, a multinational police force commanded by Kenya and backed by the United States was deployed earlier this year and has been unable to effectively combat the gangs that control the majority of the capital city of the Caribbean nation.
The country’s fragile government has been embroiled in internal disputes, and warlords have looted everything from hospitals to police stations.
According to the World Food Program, acute starvation is experienced by approximately half of Haiti’s 12 million inhabitants.
According to Stephane Dujarric, the spokesperson for the U.N. secretary-general, elderly men and women comprised 127 of the 184 fatalities in the most recent attacks.
By 2024, the United Nations estimates that approximately 5,000 individuals have been murdered in Haiti as a result of gang violence.
The government’s disarray has resulted in widespread desertions among the police.
According to security analysts and U.N. officials, criminal bosses such as Felix have prospered in the power vacuum, acquiring territory in the vicinity of Port-au-Prince’s primary shipping and fuel terminals to facilitate their primary businesses, which include extortion, kidnappings, and drug and weapons smuggling.
Rights organizations have accused gangs of recruiting children as foot soldiers, rampant murders, and rape in order to establish their control over the city’s sprawling slums.
The most recent incident of violence occurred in the Jeremie Wharf shantytown, which is under the jurisdiction of Felix’s group, on Friday and Saturday.
The neighborhood was encircled by Felix’s gang as they searched for residents over the age of 60 and suspected practitioners of witchcraft, according to rights groups.
They also reported that younger residents were murdered in an attempt to save their neighbors.
The reason for the gang’s targeting of the elderly was not immediately apparent. According to the National Human Rights Defense Network, gang members have been observed to mutilate and burn bodies in the streets, and they have issued a warning that the death toll is expected to increase.
Since April, Haiti has been nominally governed by a transitional governing council.
This is the result of an insurrection that resulted in the resignation of former Prime Minister Ariel Henry, as gangs broke open prisons and attacked government buildings and the international airport.
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