More than 6,000 people in Haiti forced to flee their homes after deadly gang attack

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SAINT-MARC, Haiti (AP) — Nearly 6,300 people have fled their homes in the aftermath of an attack in central Haiti by heavily armed gang members that killed at least 70 people, according to the U.N.’s migration agency.

Nearly 90 percent of the displaced are staying with relatives in host families, while 12 percent have found refuge in other sites including a school, the International Organization for Migration said in a report last week.

The attack in Pont-Sondé happened in the early hours of Thursday morning, and many left in the middle of the night.

Gang members “came in shooting and breaking into the houses to steal and burn. I just had time to grab my children and run in the dark,” said 60-year-old Sonise Mirano on Sunday, who was camping with hundreds of people in a park in the nearby coastal city of Saint-Marc.

WATCH: Brutal wave of gang violence leaves 1.4 million Haitians on brink of starvation

Bodies lay strewn on the streets of Pont-Sondé following the 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 on Friday.

Initial estimates put the number of those killed at 20 people, but activists and government officials discovered more bodies as they accessed areas of the town. Among the victims was a young mother, her newborn baby and a midwife, Herace said.

Prime Minister Garry Conille vowed that the perpetrators would face the full force of the law in comments in Saint-Marc on Friday.

“It is necessary to arrest them, bring them to justice, and put them in prison. They need to pay for what they have done, and the victims need to receive restitution,” he said.

The U.N. Human Rights Office of the Commissioner said in a statement that it was “horrified by Thursday’s gang attacks.”

The European Union also condemned the violence in a statement on Friday, which it said marked “yet another escalation in the extreme violence these criminal groups are inflicting on the Haitian people.”

Haiti’s government 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, and overwhelmed, hospital.

Police will remain in the area for as long as it takes to guarantee safety, Conille said, adding that he didn’t know whether it would take a day or a month. He also appealed to the population, saying “the police cannot do it alone.”

Gang violence across Artibonite, which produces much of Haiti’s food, has increased in recent years. Since that uptick, Thursday’s attack is one of the biggest massacres.

Similar ones have taken place in the capital of Port-au-Prince, 80 percent of which is controlled by gangs, and they typically are linked to turf wars, with gang members targeting civilians in areas controlled by rivals. Many neighborhoods are not safe, and people affected by the violence have not been able to return home, even if their houses have not been destroyed.

More than 700,000 people — more than half of whom are children — are now internally displaced across Haiti, according to the International Organization for Migration in an Oct. 2 statement. That was an increase of 22 percent since June.

Port-au-Prince hosts a quarter of the country’s displaced, often residing in overcrowded sites, with little to no access to basic services, the agency said.

Those forced to flee their homes are mostly being accommodated by families, who have reported significant difficulties, including food shortages, overwhelmed healthcare facilities, and a lack of essential supplies on local markets, according to the agency.

Hughes reported from Rio de Janeiro.

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