Haiti Massacre Report Faults Police Over Kenscoff Security Gaps

A Haitian human rights organisation has released a detailed account of one of the country's deadliest recent massacres, pointing to serious security failures around the farming town of Kenscoff, near Port-au-Prince.

The National Human Rights Defense Network said its findings rest on interviews with judges, police officials, armed civilians, a former police station chief and more than 100 victims and their relatives.

According to the report, at least 164 people were killed, more than 70 were kidnapped and dozens remain missing after gangs attacked Kenscoff in late August. The group said a timely strengthening of security could have prevented or limited the killings, calling the lack of response especially troubling given available information about a serious and imminent threat.

Kenscoff had already come under attack in January 2025, when at least 139 people were killed or went missing. The report said institutional failures identified after that assault were never addressed and security was never truly restored. Soldiers and special police units posted to strategic points in the town after the earlier attack were later withdrawn for reasons the group said remain unknown, cutting security personnel in the area by 60%.

Gangs struck again in July before regrouping for a larger assault in late August. A week before the massacre, an armoured vehicle was relocated because of a shortage of personnel, the report said, leaving an opening that further weakened the town. Requests from the former head of the Kenscoff police station for two additional armoured trucks went unanswered.

Days before the attack, armed men used surveillance drones to track the movements and positions of law enforcement, deployed scouts and infiltrated the area to monitor roads and identify people who might pose a threat. Government officials told the group they had not heard of plans for an attack but noticed drones flying over the town hours before it began. Tree trunks were used to block several roads in the same period.

Among the first victims was a 21-year-old man ordered to carry stones to block a road before being shot in the head. Those killed included nearly two dozen people aged 65 to 90, 36 women and seven children, one of them aged four. Victims included farmers, two pastors and a school principal who was beheaded. A man who worked at the Kenscoff police station had his eyes gouged out and his arms torn off, according to the report.

Gang members killed people sheltering at a school and a church and used bodies as barricades during hours of fighting between police and civilians. The report said armed men staged several attacks before entering Kenscoff to draw police away and weaken their defences.

The group identified the victims and how they were killed as it urged the government to provide financial, medical and psychological support to survivors and their families. It criticised what it described as police passivity and the dismissive disinterest of senior officers in protecting Kenscoff's residents, and questioned why a new UN-backed gang suppression force remains barely visible on the ground.

Data from the nonprofit Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project indicated that security operations had reduced violence in Kenscoff by 66% between January and August before the attack. In late August, the UN-backed force said it was relieving Haitian police in some areas to free units to strengthen community protection in Kenscoff. The rights group noted that another armed attack took place in the town in mid-September.

Kenscoff's mayor said in a statement on Tuesday that drones were still flying over the community and that threatening videos and messages were being posted online, warning that the signals should not be trivialised or ignored.