The poorest country in the Americas, Haiti has long suffered at the hands of violent criminal gangs that commit murders, rapes, looting, and kidnappings against a backdrop of chronic political instability.
The incident comes after a Kenyan police officer died from gunshot wounds suffered during an operation in February.
Girls were also victims of abductions, rape and other sexual assaults during gang attacks on neighborhoods, or after groups took control of areas, Amnesty said.
The latest data “reveals that 1,041,000 people, many displaced multiple times, are struggling amidst an intensifying humanitarian crisis”, the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration said.
The killings in the capital Port-au-Prince were overseen by a powerful gang leader convinced that his son’s illness was caused by followers of the religion, according to civil organization the Committee for Peace and Development (CPD).
The current force is under-staffed and under-equipped as it takes on Haiti’s powerful, well-armed gangs, and shifting to a formal UN mission would provide more money, personnel and logistical support, said Dorothy Shea, the deputy US ambassador to the United Nations.
Police opened fire in both encounters, killing 10, and then chased down those who fled with the help of self-defense groups, formed by residents opposed to the gangs and their violent rule over swaths of the country.
The nine-member council’s decision, dated Monday November 11, seeks to push out Conille after just five months in office and replace him with businessman Alix Didier Fils-Aime.
The massacre saw scores of houses and vehicles torched after gang members opened fire early last Tuesday in the town of Pont Sonde, some 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the capital Port-au-Prince.
The resolution, adopted unanimously, expressed “deep concern about the situation in Haiti including violence, criminal activities and mass displacement,” and came as the World Food Programme warned half of the country’s population now faces acute hunger.
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