Massacre in Haiti Ordered by Gang Leader Leaves Over 100 Dead, Rights Group Says

More than 180 people were killed in a massacre over the weekend in one of the poorest neighborhood’s of Haiti’s capital, the United Nation’s human rights chief said on Monday.

A leading Haitian human rights group described the killings as the personal vendetta of a gang boss who had been told that witchcraft caused his son’s fatal illness.

The slaughter began on Friday in the Wharf Jérémie section of Cité Soleil, a sprawling slum in Port-au-Prince, according to the National Human Rights Defense Network, a civil rights group based in the capital.

Older people who practiced Voodoo appeared to have been targeted, according to the group. That assessment was backed by another rights organization and a Cité Soleil resident.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, told reporters in Geneva that at least 184 people had been killed.

Nearly 130 of those who were killed were over 60 years old, according to the U.N., adding that gang members burned bodies and flung them into the sea.