Haitian Town Engulfed in Fire and Death as Gang Violence Spreads

Bodies lay scattered across the streets of the Jean-Denis neighborhood in Petite-Rivière de l'Artibonite after the Gran Grif gang rampaged through the central Haitian town, killing at least four people, including an 11-year-old child, and setting fire to more than a dozen homes.

Bertide Horace, spokesperson for the Commission for Dialogue, Reconciliation and Awareness to Save the Artibonite, told the Associated Press that at least 15 people were also wounded by gunfire. The attack began Thursday, Horace said in a phone interview, with police still battling gang members on Monday. Regional officials also confirmed a violent surge early Sunday morning as Gran Grif warred with a local vigilante group. Videos from Jean-Denis showed bloodied bodies in the streets and residential buildings engulfed in flames; officials had not yet released a definitive death toll.

The United Nations has identified Gran Grif as the largest gang in the Artibonite region, responsible for 80% of civilian deaths there. According to the U.N., the gang has massacred and raped civilians, including a minor, forced thousands to flee their homes, and dismembered people. The Trump administration designated Gran Grif a foreign terrorist organization last year.

The assault on Petite-Rivière de l'Artibonite is part of a widening campaign pushing gang warfare beyond the capital into Haiti's interior. In late March, gangs stormed a prison in Mirebalais and freed more than 500 inmates, then attacked Saut d'Eau, a town considered sacred to an annual Vodou-Catholic pilgrimage that draws thousands of Haitians. Gangs now control at least 85% of Port-au-Prince.

The violence is rooted in the power vacuum that opened after the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. In five years since, gang warfare killed more than 5,600 people across Haiti in a single year and left more than one million homeless. Around 2023, vigilante groups began emerging to fight back, though their methods, which have included beheadings, dismemberment, and burning suspected gang members alive, have complicated efforts to stabilize the country rather than resolved them.

A U.N.-backed mission led by Kenyan police, launched last year to support Haitian law enforcement, has struggled against the organized scale of the gangs. Haiti's government has repeatedly said it will not negotiate with armed groups, even as some gang leaders seek a public platform. Chrisla, leader of the Ti Bois gang, this week ordered a three-day shutdown of the Port-au-Prince neighborhood of Carrefour, closing public transportation and businesses, saying he wanted a new Haiti "so that we can all sit at the same table to reconcile this nation." The government has rejected such overtures, and in Petite-Rivière de l'Artibonite, the streets told the truer story of where those overtures now stand.