an armed gang murdered at least 20 people between Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning while they were sleeping, stated a social organization from the Artibonite department, where the massacre occurred in central Haiti.
The events occurred in the Petite Rivière commune, in an armed attack carried out by the Great Griff gangled by Luckson Elan and supposedly sponsored by former deputy Prophane Victor.
“They broke into people’s houses while they were sleeping. The images are the cruelest. They took people away and killed them. Children have been killed while they slept. What has happened is very serious,” said André Saint-Louis, general coordinator of the Artibonite Peace Initiative Committee (Kilba).
Since the return of the police to the commune, residents who confront the criminal organization have killed several members of the gang. In retaliation, the organization attacked in the middle of the night and killed many innocent people, added Saint-Louis, who revealed that the Kilba organization was created by inhabitants of the department.
Will the Police bring peace to the region?
The head of this association, created in a context of growing insecurity, reported that “significant” progress has been made in Artibonite with the return of the Haitian National Police (PNH).
Carrefour Peille, which was a gang controlled areahas been transformed thanks to the withdrawal of these organizations. The Liancourt police station, which had no police for two years, has been placed under police control. This has also happened in Petite Rivière, from where the Police had fled in January 2023.
People have regained confidence by returning to their homes and fields, which produce the most native rice, highly appreciated by the population. With gangs and armed violence, rice production has plummeted.
The Gran Griff band has existed since 2018but it was not until 2019 when it expanded. He began kidnapping people and trucks of goods, stealing vehicles and gang raping women.
“They have committed unimaginable acts against the civilian population,” explained Saint-Louis, who stated that due to the way these bandits kill, “it is impossible to know how many victims there are. Some of their bodies are thrown into the river, while others are burned.”
The people’s dream
Residents wait for the Haitian National Police to storm the gang’s stronghold.
“We wanted three things from the police. They have already done two of them, the third is that invade Great Griff’s headquarters to destroy it. Before January 1, 2025, they must enter this base to raze it so that we can get up on January 1 to eat soup independently in a city at peace, without gangs,” the community leader aspired.
The Gran Griff gang was also responsible for the massacre at the beginning of last October of some 115 people in the town of Pont Sondé, about 100 kilometers from the capital.
In another massacre, some 180 people, most of them elderly, were murdered last week in the populous Cité Soleil neighborhood of the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area, by men of Micanor Altes, alias Wa Mikano (‘King Mikano’), after He allegedly blamed the victims for doing witchcraft so that his son became seriously ill.
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