Nearly 6.300 people have fled their homes after an attack in central Haiti by armed gang members killed at least 70 people, the UN migration agency (IOM) said today.
Almost 90 percent of the displaced are staying with relatives, while 12 percent have found refuge in other places, the IOM said in its report.
The attack in Pont-Sonde took place in the early hours of Thursday morning, and many left immediately in the middle of the night.
Gang members "entered shooting and broke into houses to steal and set fire. "I only had time to grab my children and run away," said the witness, who was camping with hundreds of people in a park in the nearby coastal town of Saint-Marc.
Bodies were strewn across the streets of Pont-Sonde after the attack, many of them shot in the head.
Initial estimates put the number of dead at 20, but activists and government officials discovered more bodies as they entered parts of the city.
Prime Minister Gary Connell promised that the perpetrators would face the full force of the law. "It is necessary to arrest them, bring them to justice and put them in prison. They should pay for what they have done, and the victims should receive restitution," he said.
The Office of the UN Commissioner for Human Rights stated in a statement that it was "horrified by the gang attacks".
The European Union also condemned the violence, which it said marked "another escalation of the extreme violence that these criminal groups are inflicting on the people of Haiti."
Gang violence in Artibonite, which produces much of Haiti's food, has increased in recent years. Since that surge, Thursday's attack is one of the biggest massacres.
More than 700.000 people, more than half of whom are children, are now internally displaced across Haiti, according to the IOM. That's an increase of 22 percent since June.
The capital, Port-au-Prince, which is 80 percent controlled by gangs, hosts a quarter of the country's displaced, often living in overcrowded areas with little or no access to basic services, the agency said.
Those forced to leave their homes are mostly housing families, but with significant hardships, including food shortages, overburdened health facilities and lack of basic supplies in local markets, the agency said.
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