The 83 security personnel included an advance team of eight soldiers from El Salvador and the first 75 of 150 military police officers from Guatemala.
While the Salvadorans will be providing casualty and medical evacuations in support of the Kenya-led Multinational Security Support mission, the Guatemalans will be joining operations to take down Haiti’s gangs.
Citing sources in the area, Haiti’s Committee for Peace and Development (CPD) also said the attack targeted “all elderly people and Voodoo practitioners who, in (Micanor’s) imagination, would be capable of casting a bad spell on his son,” and left the bodies of victims mutilated in the streets.
At least 184 people were killed in the massacre, including an estimated 127 elderly men and women, the United Nations said.
The killings were carried out by Micanor Altes, who goes by the names Wa Mikanò” and Monel Felix, between Friday and Saturday in the Wharf Jérémie section of Cité Solei in Port-au-Prince, and on the advice of a local Vodou priest who accused the community’s elderly residents of being responsible for the child’s ailments.