As a massacre unfolded in Haiti, a frantic call: ‘Send for help’

Bertide Horace, a community leader in central Haiti, was awakened in the early hours last Thursday by a phone call from a woman who sounded desperate.

“Pont-Sondé is being invaded by the gang, please send for help,” the caller said, according to Ms. Horace.

At that moment, members of a Haitian gang armed with automatic weapons rampaged through the town of Pont-Sondé, according to the United Nations, local human rights groups and videos of the attack taken by some residents, shooting everyone they encountered and destroying homes . and vehicles on fire.

When Ms Horace, who was about 10 miles away in the town of Saint-Marc, arrived four hours later with heavily armed police as the sun rose, she said the town’s streets were littered with bodies.

“People came out of hiding and tried to flee,” she said in an interview. “It was total panic.”

The injured, she added, were walking around “begging for help.”

The violence, carried out by a gang called the Gran Grif, killed at least 88 people, including 10 gang members, the UN said.

Two of the dead, Ms. Horace said, were her cousins, both farm workers. She said they lay dead outside their wooden houses in the center of Pont-Sondé, a farming town of about 10,000 people about 60 miles (90 kilometers) north of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital.

Nearly 6,300 people fled their homes after the attack, according to the United Nations migration agency. Many of the survivors, suddenly homeless, now live in tents in Saint-Marc’s main square.

The gang appeared to target civilians who had joined a self-defense group that had formed in the region in part because Haitian police were largely unable to protect them from criminal groups, the UN said.

One survivor, Anièce Raphaël, 51, said she was sleeping with five relatives in Pont-Sondé when the gang entered the city.

She and three relatives fled into the surrounding hills, she said, but an aunt and a 12-year-old cousin who stayed behind were shot.

“We had to lie on the ground,” Ms. Raphaël said, describing how they hid in the darkness as the gang continued shooting. “We were very scared.”

During a break, she and her relatives escaped.

“I had to run for a long time,” says Mrs. Raphaël, who is staying with a friend. “The best thing you could do was climb the hills. We met other people doing the same thing.”

The mortuary at Saint-Marc’s only hospital could no longer accommodate bodies that arrived after the massacre, so some had to be sent to private funeral homes, said Dr. Frantz Alexis, the hospital’s director.

The hospital treated many serious gunshot wounds. “It was a very alarming situation,” said Dr. Alexis.

The massacre, Haiti’s worst mass killing in decades, is a major blow to the international effort to restore order in the country, which has been roiled by a devastating wave of gang violence since the country’s last elected president was assassinated in 2021 .

A United Nations-authorized and Kenyan-led multinational force arrived in Port-au-Prince this summer with a specific mission to tackle the gangs whose terror campaign has created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

Families have been living in makeshift shelters for months and humanitarian aid officials say about half of the country’s population is struggling to find enough food. About 700,000 people remain displaced by the violence.

But with just over 400 officers, in a force that should have 2,500 members, the multinational deployment’s patrols have been largely confined to Port-au-Prince. The force has virtually no presence outside the capital in regions where the gangs have expanded.

Pont-Sondé and Saint-Marc are located in the Artibonite, an important rice growing area where at least twenty gangs are reportedly active. A major road runs through the region connecting the capital to Cap-Haïtien, Haiti’s main northern city, and gangs have sought control of the road to carry out kidnappings and extortion.

A day before the massacre, Ms Horace said Gran Grif gang leader Luckson Elan issued a threat on social media, warning residents he was going to punish them for refusing to pay tolls the gang had set for travel on the main road.

Ms Horace, who works as a lawyer and radio show host, said the massacre was the culmination of a wave of terror that the Gran Grif gang had started unleashing in the region about two years ago and about which she had tried to raise the alarm . the group with the authorities.

The Haitian National Police did not respond to requests for comment. The local police commander in Pont-Sandé was fired the day after the massacre, according to an official government announcement in the Haitian news media.

Mr. Elan and Ms. Horace grew up in the same Artibonite town, not far from each other, she said. In October 2022, his gang attacked her hometown, Petite Riviere, and set her house on fire, killing 11 members of her family, Ms. Horace said.

“He’s one of the biggest criminals in the country,” she said.

Mr. Elan and a local lawmaker accused of fueling his rise were recently sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council and the Biden administration.

According to a statement from the US Treasury Department, Mr Elan has been responsible for a wide range of crimes and human rights abuses, including murder, rape, extortion and kidnapping.

The gang leader had been threatening Port-Sondé for several weeks before the massacre in audio messages circulating on social media, Ms Horace said. “It was common knowledge that he was going to do something,” she said.

In an audio message that Ms Horace said was delivered just days before the attack and which she shared with The Times, Mr Elan is heard addressing the residents of Pont-Sondé: “We have bullets and ammunition to do what we want to do . ”

At the same time, Haitian police have also exhausted their resources, experts say, with about 10,000 officers for the entire country, and are often outnumbered and with fewer weapons when confronting gangs.

The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Port-au-Prince, Monsignor Max Leroy Mésidor, made an urgent plea to the country’s government after the massacre.

“Who watches over the population?” he said in an audio message. “The population is fed up.”

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