Voodoo Killings Add Nearly 200 to ‘Staggering’ Haiti Death Toll

  • Gang leader targets religious community after son’s illness
  • UN says weekend massacre brings total dead this year to 5,000
Haitian police officers deploy in Port-au-Prince as they exchange gunfire with alleged gang members last month.Photographer: Clarens Siffroy/AFP/Getty Images
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Haiti’s death toll this year has hit startling levels after gangs ordered the revenge killing of at least 184 people over the weekend in the nation’s capital, a United Nations official said.

Volker Turk, the UN’s human rights chief, told reporters a powerful gang leader had ordered the murders in the Cite Soleil area of Port-au-Prince. “These latest killings bring the death toll just this year in Haiti to a staggering 5,000 people,” Turk said Monday in Geneva.