This week's gang attack on a Haitian town killed at least 70 people, UN says

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The tally of victims killed in this week's brutal attack on a small town in central Haiti by heavily armed gang members has risen to at least 70, the U.N. human rights office said Friday.

Bodies lay strewn on the streets of Pont-Sondé following Thursday's attack in the Artibonite region, many of them killed by a shot to the head, Bertide Harace, spokeswoman for the Commission for Dialogue, Reconciliation and Awareness to Save the Artibonite, told Magik 9 radio station.

Initial estimates put the number of those killed at 20 people, but activists and government officials have been gradually accessing areas of the town and discovering more bodies. Among the victims is a young mother, her newborn baby and a midwife, Herace said.

''We are horrified by Thursday's gang attacks,'' the U.N. Human Rights Office of the Commissioner said in a statement.

It said 10 women and three infants were among those killed, and at least 16 others seriously injured, including two gang members hit during an exchange with police.

The office said gang members reportedly set fire to at least 45 homes and 34 cars.

Rumors of an attack had circulated for about two months throughout the town, which gang members approached using canoes, according to a report released Friday by Haiti's National Human Rights Defense Network.

The rights group said gunmen had accused the people of Pont-Sondé of colluding with members of a self-defense group known as ''The Coalition'' to limit gang activity and prevent the gang from profiting off a makeshift toll it had recently established nearby.

After killing dozens in Pont-Sondé, the gunmen fled by foot through a nearby farm, killing anyone they encountered along the way, the group said.

''Entire families were decimated,'' it said, adding that "many others'' remain missing.

Hundreds of families who survived the attack are now sheltering in an outdoors plaza in the nearby coastal city of Saint-Marc.

''To save their lives, these victims had to hide, walk for several hours and pass by many corpses on their way,'' the group said.

Pont-Sondé is considered part of Gran Grif's territory. The gang was created after former Haitian legislator Prophane Victor began arming young men in the area to secure his election and control over the Artibonite region nearly a decade ago, according to a U.N. report.

Both Victor and the leader of Gran Grif, Luckson Elan, were sanctioned by the U.S. last month.

The gang attacked Pont-Sondé before dawn on Thursday and encountered little resistance, Herace said, though she said that contrary to some reports, police officers did try to repel the gang.

''The gang had total control of the area,'' Herace said.

Haiti's government has deployed an elite police unit based in the capital of Port-au-Prince to Pont-Sondé following the attack and sent medical supplies to help the area's lone hospital overwhelmed by nearly two dozen people injured.

Gang violence across Artibonite, which produces much of Haiti's food, has increased in recent years.

In January 2023, the Gran Grif gang was accused of attacking a police station in Liancourt, located near Pont-Sondé, and killing at least six officers. Violence unleashed by the gang also forced the closure of a hospital in February 2023 that serves more than 700,000 people.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres strongly condemned Thursday's attack, which led to the displacement of at least 3,000 people, U.N. spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said.