A Haiti Gang opened fire and killed at least seven people during a church-led protest in a suburb of the country's capital, Port-au-Prince, on Saturday.
The director of the human rights group Fondasyon Je Klere, Marie Yolene Gilles, said that a Christian church leader gathered hundreds of people. They allegedly marched in Canaan, a northern suburb of the capital, and rallied against gang violence.
Haiti Gang Shooting
Then, a local gang opened fire at the crowd using machine guns that they brought with them. Additionally, Center for Analysis and Research in Human Rights director Gedeon Jean said that the number of fatalities is likely higher because of the number of parishioners who attended the march.
Jean noted that a double responsibility is to be established because of the horrific incident. The first is the pastor who took the innocent people to the butchery, and the second is the judicial and police authorities who could not prevent the killings, as per CNN.
There was also an unknown number of people injured because of the gang's attack, and Jean said they believe there were as many as ten others who were kidnapped amid the chaos.
Video footage of the incident shared on social media showed a crowd marching down the street, many of whom were wearing yellow shirts associated with the religious group.
A local human rights group also shared a video that showed bloody bodies covering the ground as they wore the religious group's logo. Other footage on social media platforms showed similar gruesome scenes of the streets of Haiti.
Extreme Violence
The Canaan area is controlled by a gang led by a man who identified himself only as "Jeff" and is believed to be allied with the "5 Seconds" gang. In Haiti, gangs have grown even more powerful following the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise. According to Yahoo News, the groups are estimated to have control over more than 80% of Port-au-Prince.
More than 2,400 people in the country were reportedly killed from Jan. 1 to Aug. 15, while another 950 were kidnapped and 902 were injured. Angry and fed up with the surge in gang violence, residents organized a violent movement last April, known as "bwa kale."
The movement targets suspected gang members, and since the uprising, more than 350 people have been killed, the United Nations said. The Haitian government in October requested the immediate deployment of a foreign armed force to help suppress gang violence in the country.
On the other hand, the Kenyan government offered to lead a multinational force, and a delegation of top officials from the eastern African country recently traveled to Haiti as part of a reconnaissance mission.
The situation comes after the UN decried the "extreme brutality" unfolding in Haiti last week as it released new statistics regarding the ongoing violence in the region. The situation in the nation is a result of a variety of factors, including political and economic instability, said Aljazeera.
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