UN publishes new death toll from gang massacre in Haiti

The United Nations raised the death toll of a recent massacre in which dozens of older people and Vodou religious leaders were killed by a gang in Haiti, and called on officials to bring the perpetrators to justice.

The U.N. Integrated Office in Haiti said in a report published on Monday that between Dec. 6 and 11 more than 207 people were killed by the Wharf Jeremie gang. The gang took people from their homes and from a place of worship, interrogated them and then executed them with bullets and machetes.

Earlier this month, human rights groups in Haiti had estimated that more than 100 people were killed in the massacre, but the new U.N. investigation doubles the number of victims.

“We cannot pretend that nothing happened” said María Isabel Salvador, the U.N. secretary-general’s special representative in Haiti.

“I call on the Haitian justice system to thoroughly investigate these horrific crimes and arrest and punish the perpetrators, as well as those who support them," she said in a statement.

Human rights groups in Haiti said the massacre began after the son of Micanor Altès, the leader of the Wharf Jeremie gang, died from an illness.

The Cooperative for Peace and Development, a human rights group, said that according to information circulating in the community, Altès accused people in the neighborhood of causing his son’s illness.

“He decided to cruelly punish all elderly people and (Vodou) practitioners who, in his imagination, would be capable of casting a bad spell on his son,” the group said in a statement released shortly after news of the massacre emerged.

In Monday's report, the United Nations said that people were tracked down in their homes and in a place of worship by Altès’ gang, where they were first interrogated and then taken to an execution site.

The United Nations said that the gang tried to erase evidence of the killings by burning bodies, or by dismembering them and throwing them into the sea.

The massacre is the latest humanitarian tragedy in Haiti, where gang violence has intensified since the nation’s president was killed in a 2021 coup attempt.

Haiti has struggled to organize an election that will fill the power vacuum and restore democratic rule.

The Caribbean nation is currently governed by a transitional council that includes representatives from the business community, civil society and political parties, but its government has no control over many areas of the capital city, and gangs are constantly fighting over ports, highways and neighborhoods.

According to the United Nations, more than 5,350 people have been killed in Haiti’s gang wars this year.

The Haitian government acknowledged the massacre against older people in a statement issued earlier this month, and promised to persecute those responsible for this act of “unspeakable carnage.”