A US couple were among three missionaries shot and killed by gang members after they were attacked leaving a church in the Haitian capital, which has endured months of extreme violence with deadly assaults on hospitals, prisons and government buildings.
Missions in Haiti, an Oklahoma-based nonprofit founded in 2000, said that Davy and Natalie Lloyd and a third person were killed in Port-au-Prince by armed men on Thursday evening.
The third victim was identified by US media outlets as Jude Montis, the Haitian director of Missions in Haiti.
Photo: AFP / Missions in Haiti
“Davy and Natalie and Jude were shot and killed by the gang about 9 o’clock this evening,” Missions in Haiti wrote on Facebook on Friday. “We all are devastated.”
“The bandits entered the house and looted it before murdering the missionaries,” a police spokesperson said, adding that an investigation is under way.
Earlier, Missions in Haiti said on Facebook that the missionaries were ambushed by a gang traveling in three vehicles.
Photo: Reuters
“Davy was taken to the house tied up and beat,” it said. “The gang then took our trucks and loaded everything up they wanted and left.”
Members of another gang then arrived and “went into full attack mode,” the post said.
Hannah Cornett, Davy Lloyd’s sister, said that her brother was 23 years old and Natalie Lloyd was 21. They were going to celebrate their two-year anniversary next month.
Cornett said her parents are full-time missionaries in Haiti, and that she and her two brothers grew up there.
“Davy spoke Creole before he spoke English. It was home,” she said in a phone interview. “Haiti was all we knew.”
Responding to the deaths, the White House called for the swift deployment of a Kenyan-led multinational force in Haiti to tackle rampant gang violence.
“The security situation in Haiti cannot wait,” a US National Security Council spokesperson said, adding that US President Joe Biden had pledged to support the “expedited deployment” of the force in talks with Kenya’s president on Thursday.
“Our hearts go out to the families of those killed as they experience unimaginable grief,” the spokesperson said.
A spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also expressed condolences, calling it “just another example of the violence that spares no one in Haiti.”
The main airport partly reopened this week after being closed since early March, when the powerful and well-armed gangs that control much of the country went on a coordinated rampage they said was aimed at toppling then-Haitian prime minister Ariel Henry.
Lamarre Lamy, a pastor with International Missions Outreach, was shaken by the missionaries’ deaths, saying the work of such humanitarians is crucial for young Haitians amid the violence and chaos.
“Many young people are at university thanks to their support,” Lamy said.
“We shouldn’t be dying like this, you cannot spend a day without hearing about murder,” Lamy said.
Kenyan President William Ruto vowed during his visit to Washington that his country’s security deployment to Haiti would seek to crush the gangs.
The Biden administration had searched extensively for a country to take the lead on the mission to Haiti after it ruled out sending US forces, which have a long history of intervention in the country.
Additional reporting by AP
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
AIRLINES RECOVERING: Two-thirds of the flights canceled on Saturday due to the faulty CrowdStrike update that hit 8.5 million devices worldwide occurred in the US As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant