Haiti reeling after 70 killed in gang attack

The Haitian government has deployed specialist anti-gang police units, it said Friday, after an apparent massacre northwest of Port-au-Prince that the United Nations said left at least 70 dead.

Carried out early Thursday in the town of Pont Sonde, some 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the capital, the attack saw scores of houses and vehicles torched after gang members opened fire.

The killings come as an international policing mission, led by Kenyan forces, attempts to restore government control in Haiti, where armed gangs have seized swaths of the capital and countryside and earlier this year helped push out the country's leader.

"Members of the Gran Grif gang used automatic rifles to shoot at the population, killing at least 70 people, among them about 10 women and three infants," UN Human Rights Office spokesman Thameen Al-Kheetan said in a statement Friday.

The Haitian Prime Minister's office said in a statement that "this latest act of violence, targeting innocent civilians, is unacceptable and demands an urgent, rigorous and coordinated response from the state."

The embattled Haitian National Police would be "stepping up its efforts," the statement said, adding "agents from the Temporary Anti-Gang Unit (UTAG) have been deployed as reinforcements to back up teams already on the ground."

A spokeswoman for a local civil society group told Haitian media that the attack came after Gran Grif leader Luckson Elan had issued threats against people refusing to pay the group tolls to use a nearby highway.

"They executed dozens of residents," Bertide Horace told radio station Magik 9. "Almost all of the victims were shot in the head."

"Police officers stationed nearby, apparently understaffed, offered no resistance to the criminals, preferring to take cover," she said.

At least 16 people were seriously injured, the UN said, including two gang members shot by police.

The gang reportedly set fire to at least 45 houses and 34 vehicles, it added, forcing many residents to flee.

- Kenyan-led policing mission -

Additional security forces, supported by the Kenyan-led international policing mission deployed to the country, were sent to Pont Sonde overnight Thursday into Friday, the prime minister's office added.

The attack occurred at 3:00 am Thursday, it said.

Prime Minister Garry Conille added that the "heinous crime, perpetrated against defenseless women, men and children, is not only an attack on these victims, but on the entire Haitian nation."

Last week, the UN human rights office said more than 3,600 people had been killed already this year in "senseless" gang violence in the country.

Haiti has for years been beset by compounding political, humanitarian and gang crises, with armed groups rising up to push out then-prime minister Ariel Henry earlier this year in an effort that saw attacks on the international airport and police stations.

Many politicians are intertwined with armed groups: last week, the US Treasury announced sanctions against a member of parliament from the Artibonite Department, where Pont Sonde is located, for allegedly helping form the Gran Grif gang to aid in his 2016 election.

Unelected and unpopular -- and unable to restore order -- Henry resigned, and a transitional government with Conille as prime minister was put in place, backed by the international community.

That government is mandated to restore security and lead the country to its first polls since 2016.