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.
With gang violence intensifying, and the national police unable to counter it, so-called “self-defence brigades” have continued to emerge and take justice into their own hands, the report said. At least 528 cases of lynching were reported in 2023 and a further 59 this year.
Additionally, despite an arms embargo, there is a reliable supply of weapons and ammunition for the gangs coming through porous borders, resulting in the groups often having superior firepower to the police.
The report calls for tighter national and international controls to stem weapons and ammunition trafficking into Haiti and reiterates the need for the urgent deployment of a multinational security support (MSS) mission to back up the police force.
The UN Security Council authorised the mission’s deployment in October 2023, and Kenya has offered to lead it.
The United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (French: Mission des Nations Unies pour la stabilisation en Haïti), also known as MINUSTAH, an acronym of the French name, was a UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti that was in operation from 2004 to 2017.
(10.03.2024)
Haiti is gripped by chaos and disorder, as criminal gangs increasingly assert control over the country. Haiti‘s acting leader, Ariel Henry, is outside the country and attempting to negotiate a way home, even as the United States calls for him to resign and plan elections for a new government.
On Sunday, the U.S. said it had deployed additional security to its embassy in Port-au-Prince and airlifted some non-essential diplomatic staff out of the country.