(Reuters) – At least 207 people were killed by members of the Wharf Jeremie gang in Haiti’s portside neighborhood of Cite Soleil earlier this month, the United Nations said in a report on Monday, revising up a death toll it initially estimated at 187.
In a new report on the massacre, the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said at least 134 men and 73 women, most of them elderly residents accused of witchcraft, were killed in less than a week of mass executions, abductions, and raids by some 300 members of the Wharf Jeremie gang.
Gang leader Monel “Mikano” Felix ordered the attacks after his child got sick, accusing local residents of causing the illness through Voudou. Many of the victims were abducted from Voudou temples and religious ceremonies, the U.N. said.
The killings shocked the Caribbean nation, which has been engulfed in a worsening gang conflict, compounding devastating food shortages, while its neighbors lag on delivering long-promised security assistance.
Mikano’s gang has controlled a small but strategic area between key ports, surrounding warehouses and national highways out of the capital for some 15 years, according the U.N.
After the killings, gang members attempted to erase evidence by confiscating mobile phones, burning bodies and dumping them into the sea.
Over 5,300 people have been killed in Haiti since January and more than 12,000 since the start of 2022, according to the U.N., while over 700,000 have been internally displaced.
(Reporting by Harold Isaac and Sarah Morland; Editing by Alistair Bell)
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