Gang members early on Thursday attacked a small town in central Haiti, killing more than 20 people, including children, a human rights group said.
Another 50 people were injured as the Gran Grif gang burned homes and vehicles in the town of Pont-Sonde, said Bertide Harace, spokeswoman for the Commission for Dialogue, Reconciliation and Awareness to Save the Artibonite.
“A lot of people ran and left the area,” she told Radio Kiskeya.
Photo: Reuters
A video posted on social media showed a group of people fleeing through the brush, with one woman who was out of breath saying: “Nowhere to go. Nowhere to go.”
In another video, dozens of people start running through a street after hearing rumors that the gang was approaching.
Harace and others criticized police in the nearby coastal city of Saint-Marc, saying that they did not mobilize to help people being attacked in Pont-Sonde.
Venson Francois, a government prosecutor based in Saint-Marc, called the attack a “massacre” in an interview with Radio Caraibes.
Dozens of people crowded around a hospital in Saint-Marc where the injured were taken, with one man telling reporters that local authorities are not doing enough to protect people.
The attack in Pont-Sonde was blamed on the Gran Grif gang. It operates in the central Artibonite region, and experts have described it as one of Haiti’s cruelest gangs. It has gained control of more territory since 2022 under the leadership of Luckson Elan, who was sanctioned by the US Department of the Treasury last month.
The Gran Grif gang in January last year was accused of attacking a police station in Liancourt, located near Pont-Sonde, and killing at least six officers. Violence unleashed by the gang also forced the closure of a hospital in February last year that serves more than 700,000 people.
Former Haitian legislator Prophane Victor, who represented the Artibonite department, began arming young men who eventually formed the Gran Grif gang to secure his election and control the area, according to a UN report.
The US also sanctioned Victor last month.
The gang has about 100 members and has been accused of crimes including murder, rape, robberies and kidnappings, according to the report.
While most of the gang violence was concentrated in the capital, Port-au-Prince, it has now spread to the Artibonite region, where much of Haiti’s food is produced.
Young Chinese, many who fear age discrimination in their workplace after turning 35, are increasingly starting “one-person companies” that have artificial intelligence (AI) do most of the work. Smaller start-ups are already in vogue in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, with rapidly advancing AI tools seen as a welcome teammate even as they threaten layoffs at existing firms. More young people in China are subscribing to the model, as cities pledge millions of dollars in funding and rent subsidies for such ventures, in alignment with Beijing’s political goal of “technological self-reliance.” “The one-person company is a product of the AI era,” said Karen Dai
South Korea’s air force yesterday apologized for a 2021 midair collision involving two fighter jets, a day after auditors said the pilots were taking selfies and filming during the flight and held them responsible for the accident. “We sincerely apologize to the public for the concern caused by the accident that occurred in 2021,” an air force spokesman told a news conference, adding that one of the pilots involved had been suspended from flying duties, received severe disciplinary action and has since left the military. The apology followed a report released on Wednesday by the South Korean Board of Audit and Inspection,
About 240 Indians claiming descent from a Biblical tribe landed at Tel Aviv airport on Thursday as part of a government operation to relocate them to Israel. The newcomers passed under a balloon arch in blue and white, the colors of the Israeli flag, as dozens of well-wishers welcomed them with a traditional Jewish song. They were the first “bnei Menashe” (“sons of Manasseh”) to arrive in Israel since the government in November last year announced funding for the immigration of about 6,000 members of the community from the states of Manipur and Mizoram in northeast India. The community claims to descend from
‘TROUBLING’: The firing of Phelan, who was an adviser to a nonprofit that supported the defense of Taiwan, was another example of ‘dysfunction’ under Trump, a US senator said US Secretary of the Navy John Phelan has been fired, a US official and a person familiar with the matter said on Wednesday, in another wartime shakeup at the Pentagon coming just weeks after US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ousted the Army’s top general. The Pentagon announced his departure in a brief statement, saying he was leaving the administration “effective immediately,” but it did not provide a reason or say whether it was his decision to go. The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Phelan was dismissed in part because he was moving too slowly to implement reforms to
RSS