*

Gran Grif gang accused of mass kidnappings, rapes, child

recruitment

*

Some 3,000 flee Pont-Sonde as international support lags

*

Over 700,000 displaced, more than 5 million face severe

hunger

*

Gang leader says attack intended to worsen food crisis

(Adds displaced people, accusations against Gran Grif, comments

from PM and UN chief, paragraphs 4, 9-10, 17-22)

By Harold Isaac

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Armed men belonging to

the Gran Grif gang killed at least 70 people, including three

infants, and forced at least 3,000 to flee as they swept through

a Haitian town shooting automatic rifles at residents, the U.N.

said on Friday.

"We are horrified by Thursday's gang attacks in the town of

Pont-Sonde in Haiti's Artibonite department," spokesperson

Thameen Al-Kheetan said in a statement.

At least another 16 people were seriously injured in the

attack in the early hours of Thursday, including two gang

members hit during an exchange of fire with Haitian police,

according to the U.N. The gang members reportedly set fire to at

least 45 houses and 34 vehicles, forcing residents to flee their

homes.

The killings are the latest sign of a worsening conflict in

the Caribbean nation, where armed gangs control most of the

capital Port-au-Prince and are expanding to nearby regions,

fuelling hunger and making hundreds of thousands homeless, while

nearby countries continue to deport migrants back to the

country.

"This odious crime against defenseless women, men and

children is not only an attack against victims but against the

entire Haitian nation," Prime Minister Garry Conille said on X.

Conille added that security forces were "reinforcing their

intervention" in the area. His office said the nearby public

hospital was boosting capacity to treat the wounded.

In an audio message shared on social media on Thursday, Gran

Grif leader Luckson Elan, who was sanctioned by the U.N. last

month, blamed the state and victims for the attacks, accusing

residents of remaining passive while his soldiers were killed by

police or vigilante groups.

"It's Pont-Sonde residents who are at fault. What happened

in Pont-Sonde is the fault of the state," he said.

The U.N. accused Elan's gang of carrying out killings, rapes,

mass kidnappings, robbery, destroying property, hijacking trucks

and forcing farmers off swaths of land, threatening to kill them

if they return.

"Gran Grif has also committed some of the highest levels of

child recruitment in Haiti," according to the U.N. Security

Council. The U.N. believes Haiti's gangs are armed largely by

guns trafficked from the United States.

Local media reported on Thursday that thousands of residents

from Pont-Sonde were making their way toward the coastal town of

Saint-Marc. Pont-Sonde is a major rice producer located in

Haiti's breadbasket Artibonite region at an important crossing

connecting the capital to the north.

Artibonite has seen some of the worst violence outside the

capital, compounding a worsening hunger crisis that has seen

half the population suffer from severe food insecurity and

thousands in Port-au-Prince facing famine-level hunger.

CALL FOR ASSISTANCE

Gang leader Jimmy "Barbeque" Cherizier, who has acted as

spokesperson for an alliance of armed gangs in the capital, said

in a video the attack was part of a plan to prevent Artibonite

from supplying food to the country.

The number of people internally displaced by the conflict

has meanwhile surged past 700,000, nearly doubling in six months

despite the partial deployment of a U.N.-backed mission mandated

to help under-resourced police restore order.

Haiti's government had requested that the mission, which is

made up of volunteer contributions and has so far received just

a fraction of the resources it was promised, be converted into a

formal U.N. peacekeeping mission. That proposal was blocked by

Russia and China at the U.N. Security Council.

"We call for increased international financial and

logistical assistance to the Multinational Security Support

Mission in Haiti," Al-Kheetan said, calling for an urgent

investigation and reparations for the victims.

The call was echoed later on Friday by a spokesperson for

U.N. chief Antonio Guterres.

Haiti's prime minister warned last month that countries

should urgently fulfill their pledges to the nation in order to

contain the situation. National police said a specialist

anti-gang unit had been dispatched to the region.

The U.N. estimated at the end of September that 3,661 people

had been killed in the conflict since January.

Haiti's former government first requested international

security support in 2022.

Countries including the United States and the UK, which both

hold territories in the Caribbean, have meanwhile continued to

organize deportation flights back to Haiti, despite pleas not to

do so by the United Nations.

Responding to the "limited" results of the mission more than

a year after it was formally approved, neighboring Dominican

Republic said this week it would step up deportations of

undocumented migrants to up to 10,000 per week.