A powerful gang opened fire on Saturday on a large group of parishioners led by a pastor as they marched through a community armed with machetes to rid the area of gang members.
The attack was filmed in real time by journalists at the scene, and several people were killed and others injured, said Marie Yolene Gilles, director of human rights group Fondasyon Je Klere.
She watched online as hundreds of people from a local church marched through Canaan, a makeshift town in the outskirts of Port-au-Prince founded by survivors who lost their homes in the devastating 2010 earthquake.
It was not immediately clear how many people were killed and injured in the attack.
Canaan is controlled by a gang led by a man identified only as “Jeff,” who is believed to be allied with the “5 Seconds” gang.
Gangs have grown more powerful since the July 2021 assassination of Haitian president Jovenel Moise, and they are estimated to control up to 80 percent of Port-au-Prince.
Gedeon Jean, director of Haiti’s Center for Analysis and Research in Human Rights, said that he also watched the event unfold online and planned to ask the Haitian Ministry of Justice to investigate.
He accused the pastor of being irresponsible because he “engaged a group of people and put them in a situation like this.”
The parishioners, who clutched machetes and yelled “Free Canaan!” were no match for gang members armed with assault rifles.
“Police should have stopped them from going,” Jean said. “It’s extremely horrible for the state to let something like this happen.”
A spokesperson for Haitian National Police did not return a message for comment.
From Jan. 1 until Aug. 15, more than 2,400 people in Haiti were reported killed, more than 950 kidnapped and another 902 injured, according to the most recent UN statistics.
Fed up with the surge in gang violence, Haitians organized a violent movement in April known as bwa kale that targets suspected gang members. More than 350 people have been killed since the uprising began, according to the UN.
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
In front of a secluded temple in southwestern China, Duan Ruru skillfully executes a series of chops and strikes, practicing kung fu techniques she has spent a decade mastering. Chinese martial arts have long been considered a male-dominated sphere, but a cohort of Generation Z women like Duan is challenging that assumption and generating publicity for their particular school of kung fu. “Since I was little, I’ve had a love for martial arts... I thought that girls learning martial arts was super swaggy,” Duan, 23, said. The ancient Emei school where she trains in the mountains of China’s Sichuan Province
RSS