MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – At least 110 people were killed over the weekend in Haiti’s Cite Soleil slum when a gang leader targeted elderly people he suspected of causing his child’s illness through witchcraft, the National Human Right Defense Network said on Sunday.
The gang leader, known as Monel “Mikano” Felix, along with his Viv Ansanm group, were responsible of the massacre.
RNDDH said that after Felix’s child became sick, he sought advice from a voudou priest who accused elderly people in the area of harming the child through witchcraft, triggering Felix to order the massacre.
Gang members killed at least 60 people on Friday and 50 on Saturday using machetes and knives, all of them aged over 60, it said.
Cite Soleil, a densely populated slum by the port of the capital Port-au-Prince, is among the poorest and most violent areas of Haiti.
Tight gang control, including the restriction of mobile phone use, limited residents’ ability to share information about the massacre.
Felix, who heads the Wharf Jeremie gang, was in 2022 banned from entering neighboring Dominican Republic.
(by Harold Isaac in Port-au-Prince; Writing by Sarah Morland; Editing by; Aida Pelaez-Fernandez)
Comments