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.

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

"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."

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

Gang members reportedly set fire to at least 45 houses and 34 vehicles, it added, forcing an unknown number of residents to flee.

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.

Prime Minister Garry Conille added that the "heinous crime, perpetrated against defenceless 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.

The United Nations recently extended its greenlight for the Kenyan-led policing mission, which aims to help the government secure swaths of the capital and countryside under gang control.

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.