The Haitian Episcopal Conference has reported that dozens of people were massacred this week in the Artibonite Valley, in the north, following an attack last Tuesday attributed to vigilante groups amid the climate of extreme violence the country has endured for years due to the activity of armed gangs.
The attack occurred in the town of Préval, in the Petite Rivière de l’Artibonite. The Episcopal Conference has not provided details of the death toll, but has confirmed the murder of 86-year-old Pastor Jacques Brutus, which took place on Tuesday, May 20, 2025, in a note of condolence reported by the AlterPresse news agency.
Local sources at AlterPresse report 24 deaths so far in this attack, which followed a previous assault by members of the Gran Grif armed group, in which they shot and killed a member of a self-defense coalition led by a local leader known as Ti mepri.
Hours later, the self-defense coalitions of Bois-La Ville, Tapèyèn (L’Estère), Ponsondé, Chandel, Barrière-Léon, and Jean-Denis launched “a punitive operation of unusual brutality” against the town of Préval, according to Bertide Horace, spokesperson for the Dialogue and Awareness Commission.
“The self-defense coalition has massacred us, and the police are nowhere to be seen. The situation is extremely serious,” Horace lamented in a statement to AlterPresse.
The United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) has estimated the number of deaths from gang violence in Haiti at more than 1,600 and 580 injured during the first quarter of 2025, while the number of internally displaced people has surpassed one million, a 48 percent increase compared to September 2024 figures.
Between January 1 and March 31, 2025, at least 1,617 people were killed by gang violence, vigilante groups, and Haitian National Police operations. Eighty-five percent of the victims were men; 13 percent were women; and two percent were children, according to a report released this month.
