Haiti gang raid in Kenscoff kills 47 and takes more than 50 hostages

Armed men killed at least 47 people, kidnapped more than 50 and injured 22 in Kenscoff, in the hills above Port-au-Prince, on the evening of 23 August. The United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti, BINUH, published the count on Tuesday. Secretary-General António Guterres said 22 of the dead were executed in a church compound where they had gone for shelter.

At least five of the 47 were children. Officials and residents described the raid as one of the largest mass kidnappings in Haiti in recent years. The country is trying to organise its first general election in more than a decade while gangs hold large parts of the capital region.

The church, the houses and the video

Haitian officials blamed members of Viv Ansanm, a coalition the United States listed last year as a foreign terrorist organisation. The attackers hit a church and private homes, including the house of Jean William Pape, a well-known public health doctor.

Marc Paul, 42, told the Associated Press that gunmen took his brother, stepmother, stepfather and two cousins. He said his 16-year-old niece was captured and raped, then escaped and reached him. “I had to run over bodies,” he said. A video later circulated. In it a man calling himself Izo 2, also known as Didi, addressed National Police director Vladimir Paraison: “Paraison, if any of our soldiers are hurt, I will kill all of them.” Local reporting links Izo 2 to Johnson André, known as Izo, one of the country’s most powerful gang leaders.

Paul saw the video and said, “My brother is probably going to die.”

What Guterres flagged

Guterres called the raid evidence of “the alarming security situation in Haiti.” BINUH has recorded a string of assaults on communities that had been treated as relatively quiet. Kenscoff sits above the capital and had not seen an attack of this size. Sunday night changed that measurement.

Haiti’s police force is small relative to the ground gangs control. A multinational mission has not reversed the loss of neighbourhoods in Port-au-Prince. An election timetable assumes that candidates can campaign and that ballots can move. A raid that kills 47 people in one hill town and then uses the hostages as a shield against any police response is a direct constraint on that timetable.

The facts that can still be checked are the BINUH numbers, the church executions, the name Izo 2 on the video, and the threat against Paraison. Whether Viv Ansanm as a whole ordered the raid is a claim by Haitian officials, not yet a court finding. The hostages remain the open count. Until that number falls, every police movement in Kenscoff carries the price the man on the video named.