Haiti: UN ‘horrified’ after at least 70 killed in gang massacre

Published

8 months ago

October 4, 2024

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At least 70 people have been killed in a gang massacre in Haiti, the UN has said.

Armed gunmen belonging to the Gran Grif gang passed through the town of Pont-Sonde with automatic rifles, shooting at residents on Thursday, according to the United Nations’ Human Rights Office.

“We are horrified by Thursday’s gang attacks in the town of Pont-Sonde in Haiti’s Artibonite region,” a spokesperson said.

At least 16 people were also seriously injured in the attack in the early hours of Thursday, according to the UN.

Gang members were said to have set fire to at least 45 homes and 34 vehicles, forcing residents to flee.

Gang violence in Haiti is rampant and has brought parts of the country to a standstill.

Sky News chief correspondent Stuart Ramsay previously interviewed a man known as Barbecue, one of the country’s most powerful criminals.

Women and children among the dead

Bodies lay strewn on the streets of Pont-Sonde, in the Artibonite region, many of them shot in the head, a spokeswoman for the Commission for Dialogue, Reconciliation and Awareness to Save the Artibonite, told Magik 9 radio station.

Among the victims were a young mother, her newborn baby, and a midwife.

In total, it was said that 10 women and three children were among the dead.

Video of the attack showed hundreds running for their lives.

The motive for one of the biggest massacres in the country’s central region in recent years remains unclear.

Attacks of that kind have taken place in the capital Port-au-Prince, which is 80% controlled by gangs, and they are typically linked to turf wars.

While rival gang members generally target areas controlled by one another, Pont-Sonde is considered a part of Gran Grif’s own territory.

The Haitian government deployed an elite police unit based in the country’s capital to Pont-Sonde following the attack and sent medical supplies to the area’s lone hospital, overwhelmed by the dozens of people injured.

“This heinous crime, perpetrated against defenceless women, men, and children, is not only an attack on these victims, but on the entire Haitian nation,” Prime Minister Garry Conille said in a statement on Friday.

In an audio message shared on Thursday, Gran Grif leader Luckson Elan, who was sanctioned by the UN last month, blamed the state and victims for the attacks, accusing residents of remaining passive as 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 claimed without evidence.

Gang violence across Artibonite, which produces much of Haiti’s food, has increased in recent years.

World

The fight for the Arctic – where climate change is giving Russia room to manoeuvre

Published

7 hours ago

May 29, 2025

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The fight for the Arctic - where climate change is giving Russia room to manoeuvre

The twin threats of climate change and Russian malign activity in the Arctic must be taken “deadly seriously,” David Lammy has warned.

Sky News joined him on the furthest reaching tour of the Arctic by a British foreign secretary.

We travelled to Svalbard – a Norwegian archipelago that is the most northern settled land on Earth, 400 miles from the North Pole.

It is at the heart of an Arctic region facing growing geopolitical tension and feeling the brunt of climate change.

Mr Lammy told us the geopolitics of the region must be taken “deadly seriously” due to climate change and “the threats we’re seeing from Russia”.

We witnessed the direct impact of climate change along Svalbard’s coastline and inland waterways. There is less ice, we were told, compared to the past.

The melting ice is opening up the Arctic and allowing Russia more freedom to manoeuvre.

“We do see Russia’s shadow fleet using these waters,” Mr Lammy said. “We do see increased activity from submarines with nuclear capability under our waters and we do see hybrid sabotage of undersea cables at this time.”

In Tromso, further south, the foreign secretary was briefed by Norwegian military commanders.

Vice Admiral Rune Andersen, the Chief of Norwegian Joint Headquarters, told Sky News the Russian threat was explicit.

“Russia has stated that they are in confrontation with the West and are utilising a lot of hybrid methods to undermine Western security,” he said.

But it’s not just Vladimir Putin they’re worried about. Norwegian observers are concerned by US president Donald Trump’s strange relationship with the Russian leader too.

Karsten Friis, a Norwegian defence and security analyst, told Sky News: “If he’s too soft on Putin, if he is kind of normalising relations with Russia, I wouldn’t be surprised.

“I would expect Russia to push us, to test us, to push borders, to see what we can do as Europeans.”

Changes in the Arctic mean new challenges for the NATO military alliance – including stepping up activity to deter threats, most of all from Russia.

In Iceland, we toured a NATO airbase with the foreign secretary.

There, he said maintaining robust presence in the Arctic was essential for western security.

“Let’s be clear, in this challenging geopolitical moment the high north and the Arctic is a heavily contested arena and we should be under no doubt that NATO and the UK need to protect it for our own national security.”

This is also about distracting Russia, drawing away resources that could have been used in the war in Ukraine and deterring it in the future.

Because the more Arctic opens up, the more this once pristine wilderness is becoming the arena of national rivalry and potentially conflict.

World

‘What did they do to be burned and bombed?’: Charity calls on UK to offer Gaza children life-saving treatment

Published

14 hours ago

May 29, 2025

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'What did they do to be burned and bombed?': Charity calls on UK to offer Gaza children life-saving treatment

A British charity has written to the prime minister and foreign secretary, urging them to allow seriously ill children from Gaza into the UK to receive life-saving medical treatment.

Warning: This article contains images readers may find distressing

The co-founder of Project Pure Hope told Sky News it was way past the time for words.

“Now, we need action,” Omar Dinn said.

He’s identified two children inside Gaza who urgently need help and is appealing to the UK government to issue visas as a matter of urgency.

Israel-Gaza latest: Netanyahu reportedly accepts US ceasefire plan

Britain has taken only two patients from Gaza for medical treatment in 20 months of Israeli bombardment.

“Most of the people affected by this catastrophe that’s unfolding in Gaza are children,” he continued. “And children are the most vulnerable.

“They have nothing to do with the politics, and we really just need to see them for what they are.

“They are children, just like my children, just like everybody’s children in this country – and we have the ability to help them.”

Sky News has been sent video blogs from British surgeons working in Gaza right now which show the conditions and difficulties they’re working under.

They prepare for potential immediate evacuation whilst facing long lists, mainly of children, needing life-saving emergency treatment day after day.

Dr Victoria Rose told us: “Every time I come, I say it’s really bad, but this is on a completely different scale now. It’s mass casualties. It’s utter carnage.

“We are incapable of getting through this volume. We don’t have the personnel. We don’t have the medical supplies. And we really don’t have the facilities.

“We are the last standing hospital in the south of Gaza. We really are on our knees now.”

One of her patients is three-year-old Hatem, who was badly burned when an Israeli airstrike hit the family apartment.

His pregnant mother and father were both killed, leaving him an orphan. He has 35 percent burns on his small body.

“It’s a massive burn for a little guy like this,” Dr Rose says. “He’s so adorable. His eyelids are burnt. His hands are burnt. His feet are burnt.”

Hatem’s grandfather barely leaves his hospital bedside. Hatem Senior told us: “What did these children do wrong to suffer such injuries? To be burned and bombed? We ask God to grant them healing.”

The second child identified by the charity is Karam, who, aged one, is trying to survive in a tent in deeply unhygienic surroundings with a protruding intestine.

He’s suffering from a birth defect called Hirschsprung disease, which could be easily operated on with the right skills and equipment – unavailable to him in Gaza right now.

Karam’s mother Manal told our Gaza camera crew: “No matter how much I describe how much my son is suffering, I wouldn’t be able to describe it enough. I swear I am constantly crying.”

Children are among the bulk of casualties – some 16,000 have been killed, according to the latest figures from local health officials – and make up the majority of those being operated on, according to the British surgical team on the ground.