PORT-AU-PRINCE, March 30 (Reuters) – At least 16 people were killed and 10 more injured in an attack in Petite-Riviere, in Haiti’s breadbasket Artibonite region, police said on Monday, amid a conflict with the Gran Grif gang.
A preliminary report by local civil protection authorities suggested a higher toll, reporting 17 dead and 19 injured.
Armed members of the Gran Grif gang attacked the Jean-Denis area at approximately 3 a.m., local civil protection authorities said.
The attack follows United Nations reports that more than 2,000 people were recently displaced by armed raids in nearby Verrettes, prompting residents in Petite-Riviere to flee their homes.
The Artibonite department, a key agricultural area, has seen some of the country’s worst violence as gang conflict spreads beyond the capital, Port-au-Prince.
In March, the United States offered a reward of up to $3 million for information on the financial activities of the Gran Grif and Viv Ansanm groups. Washington has designated both, which represent coalitions of hundreds of gangs, as terrorist organizations.
Haitian security forces, supported by a U.N.-backed international mission and a U.S. private military company, have intensified operations against gangs that control most of the capital. However, authorities have yet to arrest a major gang leader.
More than a million people have been displaced by the conflict with gangs, which has exacerbated food insecurity, and close to 20,000 have been reported killed in Haiti since 2021. The death toll has climbed every year.
(Reporting by Steven Aristil; Writing by Natalia Siniawski, Editing by Sarah Morland and Brendan O’Boyle)
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