The killers came under cover of darkness and, after crossing the Artibonite River on an abandoned bridge, armed with automatic weapons and knives, they ransacked this once-quiet rural community.
“[They] They were like headless chickens, shooting at anyone they saw,” said Louiseul François, a resident of the Haitian town of Pon Sonde, who managed to survive the massacre.
Francois heard the first shots of the gang invasion around 3 a.m., jumped out of bed and gathered at the entrance to the town with other members of a local vigilante group known as the Coalition. Despite their attempts to organize, the members soon found themselves outnumbered. They fled into the surrounding hills, where the locals crouched down, bleary-eyed and frightened.
“The gangs fired at everything that moved, including the dogs… They came to wipe out the whole area. It was a planned massacre,” he said of the pre-dawn onslaught. said Francois, 41, who lost six friends and relatives.
Francois, his voice shaking with emotion, described what he saw later that morning when he returned to the scene with police who had pushed back the intruders.
The attackers broke into the house and killed everyone they found. At one intersection, Francois saw four bodies near a burning house. Further ahead, a school and a clinic were set on fire. In one street alone, 19 bodies were scattered in the dirt. “It's a man, a woman and a 3-year-old child,” said the father of three.
Although the scenes were horrifying, they represented only a small portion of the scene of the massacre, and the full death toll was not revealed until almost a week after the attack.
At least 115 people are now believed to have been shot or stabbed to death when gang members swept through Pong Zhonde in apparent retaliation for the market town's refusal to submit to the gang's authority. The victims reportedly included infants and the elderly.
One of those killed was Francois's cousin, and his body, which Francois first discovered, was found lying in a pool of blood. “His head had been shattered by a bullet and his chest had been slashed with a machete,” said Francois, who attended three funerals in one day. “It's impossible for a community this small to handle all of this.”
Experts say the October 3 attack is Haiti's worst in decades, surpassing the 2018 killing of more than 70 civilians in Port-au-Prince's La Saline slum. It is believed to be one of the murder cases.
“Unfortunately, there are many genocides in Haiti's history…but [in terms of recent years] This was on a high level…it was really out of line,'' said William O'Neill, the UN's chief expert on human rights in the Caribbean country.
Mr O'Neill, a veteran human rights lawyer who has also worked in Rwanda and South Sudan, said he felt there was a method of “coordinated and deliberate” extermination of lives by gangs in Ponsonde.
He said the massacre was not just about annihilating individual lives, but was meant to send a warning to Haiti's recently installed interim government and the United Nations-backed international security forces, which are trying to restore order after months of chaos. I believed it was done in “'We have this under control. Don't mess with us. Don't go out…' That was their message, and they communicated it loud and clear,” O'Neill said. spoke.
When the first members of the Kenyan-led multinational police mission landed in Haiti in June, the country's new Prime Minister Garry Conneill delivered the following message: The same goes for the gang bosses accused of holding 12 million Haitians hostage. “We call on the bandits to lay down their guns and recognize the authority of the state,” said Coneil, a former development worker for the United Nations agency UNICEF.
So far, there is no evidence that criminal groups have responded to Conil's call. But in recent months, some gangs appear to have temporarily retreated, perhaps seeking to lay low while countering foreign forces.
During a visit to Port-au-Prince last month, security expert Romain Le Cour Grandmaison said: He felt that the incomplete subsidence of violence was creating a sense of “uneasy peace.''
Much of Haiti's capital remained under gang control, with sporadic fighting still occurring in and around the city, including a deadly attack on the town of Gantier in August. However, some markets and schools have reopened after the arrival of hundreds of Kenyan police. A modicum of stability was achieved with the creation of a transitional government tasked with organizing new elections needed after the assassination of President Juvenel Moïse in 2021.
“It feels like there is someone in charge,” said Le Cour Grandmaison, who works for the Geneva-based civil society group Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.
The Pon Sonde massacre cast doubt on that weak improvement and exposed how politically connected gangs continue to control not only large parts of Haiti's capital. Artibonite Valley tooone of the most important agricultural centers.
“We live in constant fear,” said Miriam Fièvre, the mayor of Saint-Marc, near the killing site where thousands of displaced residents of Pont Sonde have taken refuge.
The massacre has been blamed on one of Artibonite's most notorious gangs, the Grand Griefs, which control a key section of National Highway 1 between the capital and Haiti's second-largest city, Cap-Haitien.
a UN Report 2023 The gang's main criminal activities are listed as “murder, rape, robbery, destruction of property, hijacking of trucks and goods, and violence against civilians.” [and] “Kidnapping”. In late September, the United Nations and the United States announced sanctions against the leader of the Gran Griffs, Lacson Elan (also known as General Lacson), and local politicians accused of funding and arming the group's young foot soldiers.
“Not even a week later, [Elan] “We committed one of the most heinous massacres in Haiti's recent history…such is the scale of the massacre,” Le Cour Grandmaison said of the Pont Sonde murders. “This shows that there was a sense of absolute power, impunity and a blatant display of power that the gang wanted to wield at this very specific time.”
Saint-Marc's Fievre said Port-au-Prince residents may have become accustomed to explosions and gunshots after a series of riots and coups in recent decades. “But now it's happening here at Artibonite,” she added. “People are not used to this. They just want to go about their daily lives. It's like we don't live in our own country anymore.”
The U.N.'s O'Neill, who also visited Port-au-Prince last month, urged Haitian gangs to do more to support underfunded, underequipped and outnumbered multinational security forces before being emboldened by their lack of organization. appealed to the international community. Progressed and returned to the warpath. So far, the mission has received around £65 million ($84 million) of the estimated £450 million ($588 million) needed.
Professor O'Neill likened the current task to a surgeon attempting to perform a heart operation on a patient without an anesthesiologist, a broken heart monitor, a collapsing operating table and a tray of rusted instruments. “What do you think the chances of that surgery being successful?'' he said.
Two weeks after the massacre, Fièvre said security was slowly returning to Pon Sonde thanks to the arrival of Haitian and Kenyan police. But she feared gangs would soon try to take control of Saint-Marc, one of Haiti's largest towns about 55 miles (89 kilometers) northwest of the capital, and said the Artibonite area was a “bloodbath.” '', he lamented.
“We need help, and we need it now,” Fievre said. “As we sleep now, we feel that our destiny is in God's hands.”
