Port-au-Prince .- At least seven people died between Monday night and this morning in an attack perpetrated by armed gangs belonging to the Viv Ansanm coalition, in a town in southeastern Haiti, in retaliation for the arrest of one of their own at a police station.
The attack occurred in Seguin, a town located in the municipality of Marigot, in the southeast department, south of Port-au-Prince, where the police station and at least two vehicles of the Haitian National Police (HNP) were also set on fire, according to videos circulating on social media, in which several corpses are also observed.
“There is information suggesting that an associate of the gangs was detained at the Seguin police station, and the bandits responded by killing these people,” explained the mayor of Marigot, René Danneau, on a state radio program.
According to the mayor, the victims were residents of the area who are part of a community brigade that fights alongside the PNH against the gangs.
With this new attack by armed gangs in this southeastern locality, a new department of the country risks falling into the hands of the gangs, thus joining the departments of the West, Center and Artibonite (north of the capital), also in the center of the country.
Security Crisis in Haiti
At the end of last March, at least 70 people died in the towns of Jean Denis and Pont Sondé, in the Artibonite department, at the hands of the armed group Gran Grif, which also injured dozens and set fire to homes.
On that occasion, non-governmental organizations and the embassies of the United States and France expressed their condemnation and repudiation of this attack, which is reminiscent of other massacres that have taken place in Haiti, amid extreme violence that, according to the United Nations, caused the death of at least 5,500 people between March 2025 and mid-January 2026.
A first contingent of 50 Chadian troops arrived in Haiti on April 1, marking the start of operations for the Gang Suppression Force (GSF) backed by the UN, which is expected to reach a maximum of 5,500 personnel from that and other countries.
