According to the UN, there have been 4,544 confirmed deaths from gang violence this year.
184 people were killed over the weekend in the Haitian capital amid an increase in gang violence, according to the UN rights chief.
Rights commissioner Volker Turk told reporters in Geneva on Monday that “just this past weekend, at least 184 people were killed in violence orchestrated by the leader of a powerful gang in the Cite Soleil area in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince.”
“These latest killings bring the death toll just this year in Haiti to a staggering 5,000 people.”
Armed groups conducted coordinated attacks in the capital in late February, claiming they sought to oust then-prime minister Ariel Henry, further escalating Haiti’s already terrible situation following decades of ongoing political turmoil.
Increasing the number
Eighty percent of Port-au-Prince is now under gang control, and violence has increased in spite of a police support operation led by Kenya and supported by the US and the UN.
Although the actual number “is likely higher still,” the UN said in November that the verified death toll from gang violence this year was 4,544.
Women and girls are the targets of particularly horrific crimes; victims have been burned, stoned, decapitated, mangled with machetes, or buried alive.
According to the International Organization for Migration, half of the 700,000 refugees who have escaped the tragedy are children.
