UN: 1,167 killed in Haiti in three months as gangs behead elderly women, attack a church and recruit children; police executions triple

UN: 1,167 killed in Haiti in three months as gangs behead elderly women, attack a church and recruit children; police executions triple.

At least 1,167 people were killed and 459 injured in Haiti between July and September, the United Nations said in its latest human rights report, as armed gangs tightened their grip on Port-au-Prince and pushed violence into areas that had largely escaped it. The figures come from BINUH, the UN Integrated Office in Haiti, and were published by UN News on Thursday.

The report describes atrocities that rarely make Western headlines. In early August, gangs beheaded at least 19 people in the Cité Soleil neighborhood, 12 of them elderly women. Two attacks on the town of Kenscoff in July and August left at least 105 dead, including 19 children; more than 36 victims were shot in the courtyard of a Protestant church. Violence also reached Saint-Michel-de-l'Attalaye in Artibonite and Marigot in the South-East, communes previously spared.

"The scale of the massacres" in Kenscoff and other localities "reminds us of the absolute need to strengthen both mechanisms for protecting the population and the presence of the State in recently liberated areas," said Carlos Ruiz Massieu, the UN secretary-general's special representative in Haiti.

The state's own forces are part of the toll. More than half of documented killings and injuries happened during ground or aerial operations by security forces against gangs, sometimes supported by a private military company using drones, the UN said. Explosive drone attacks killed at least four people, including two children. BINUH documented 44 cases of extrajudicial executions or attempted executions involving Haitian National Police officers, up from 14 the previous quarter, and about 5% of incidents were attributed to vigilante self-defense groups.

Civilians are paying in other ways too. Kidnappings for ransom rose to at least 137 from 81 the previous quarter, with children making up 10% of victims. The UN recorded 344 victims of gang sexual violence, aged 8 to 75, most of them gang rapes. In August, at least 32 boys aged 14 to 16 who had been forcibly recruited by a gang were killed in fighting with security forces in Gressier. Gangs also killed people who resisted extortion or denounced attempts to interfere in the electoral process, and regained ground in Bel Air and La Saline after earlier being pushed out.

The UN Security Council has authorized a Gang Suppression Force for Haiti, but it has yet to fully deploy. The report urges Haitian authorities to protect victims and calls on the international community to stay engaged and complete that deployment in line with human rights standards, a call that matters for a country whose crisis drives migration across the hemisphere.