PORT-AU-PRINCE — Gracia Joseph and her 93-year-old husband, Caristaîn, were at home in their remote village of sprawling vegetable gardens and terraced mountain fields at the top of Port-au-Prince when the sounds of gunshots and men on motorcycles disrupted their morning calm, and forced them to flee.
After seeking refuge nearby, the elderly couple decided it would be better to hide in the fields. But then Gracia, 83, remembered the cool temperatures that make the town of Kenscoff and its surrounding steep mountain vistas one of Haiti’s hidden havens. Ignoring her husband’s pleas, she headed to the house to grab a linen blanket to keep them warm.
She never made it to the door. Armed gang members, who had been transporting rifles on horseback and stockpiling them in the rural hamlet of Kafoubèt, gunned her down as her elderly husband watched in horror.
“She couldn’t defend herself. She couldn’t move fast enough to get away,” said Jose Joseph, who has been unable to recover his mother’s body since the tragic killing on Monday. He believes that even his father, who survived the first assault, may also be dead following a second attack.
Jose Joseph has compiled a list of at least 47 victims; about a dozen of them are his own relatives.
The names include his elderly parents, an uncle and another relative who was killed along with four daughters. In another house, six family members were killed. Mothers, fathers, schoolchildren— all from the countryside, all dead. After the attack in Kafoubèt, also known as Carrefour Berthe, gangs moved to the neighboring community of Qui Croit, referred to as Kikwa by locals. Both are rural sections of the township of Kenscoff, a mountainous agricultural region seven miles southeast of Port-au-Prince.
Residents from rural communities in Kenscoff, Haiti were forced to flee after armed gangs began attacking the mountainside region above Port-au-Prince on Monday, January 27, 2025. (Photo by: Johnny Fils-Aimé For the Miami Herald)
The ongoing gang assault by members of the powerful Viv Ansanm, Living Together, gang alliance on Kenscoff, a region of lush pine trees, vegetable farms and vacation homes, highlights the brutal reach of criminal groups and how no one is immune to the terrifying violence. It has also underscored the failings of Haiti’s response, including the lack of planning, coordination and operations by the national police, whose director has come under increased scrutiny after the attack.
On Thursday, Prime Minister Alix Dider Fils-Aimé, questioned how police allowed the attack to happen when the intelligence service of the police, justice ministry, prime minister’s office, and interior ministry “all knew there was going to be a problem.”
“How did we know, and we allowed this to happen?” he asked during a visit to police headquarters.
Marie Yolène Gilles, a human-rights advocate who has been investigating the tragedy, said the attack on Kenscoff could have been prevented, just as other mass killings that gangs orchestrated last year after first announcing their plans on social media. “It was announced on all the social media platforms,” she said. “On Jan. 23 the Kenscoff police station was aware. On Jan. 25 the mayor’s office issued a curfew notice. The police said they had means and could respond. Today… the gangs have been reinforced in Kafoubèt. They came with ammunition on horseback, they’ve taken a church as their headquarters, and the population is out in the streets, for how long we don’t know. The police have shown that they are powerless.”
As many as 3,000 people have had to flee their torched homes, Gilles and local authorities say, many with nothing but the clothes on their backs.
Strategic location Kenscoff’s geographic position southeast of the capital and its surrounding farming communities have made it a strategic location. It offers the last connection by road to the southern regions of Haiti, which have been cut off by gang control of a national road at the bottom of the mountain, and the ongoing suspension of domestic flights.
A foothold in the mountains of Port-au-Prince would not only give the gangs leverage over the capital’s food supply, it would also provide a crucial location from which gangs could control the last remaining terror-free bastion, the wealthy enclave of Pétion-Ville.
The battle to push back the gangs has become critical. If the police, army and the Kenya-led Multinational Security Support mission can hold Kenscoff, it would be a significant blow to the gangs’ expansion at a time when they control as much as 90% of Port-au-Prince.
“We’re going to intensify the response,” said Mario Andresol, the new secretary of state for public security.
Masillon Jean, mayor of Kenscoff, says he’s fighting to reestablish security in his mountainside rural community, south of Haiti’s capital, after armed gangs launched a full scale attack on Monday, January 27, 2025. (Photo courtesy of Masillon Jean)
‘Stand strong’
Kenscoff Mayor Masillon Jean told the Miami Herald that security forces have been deployed in the community and “we’re fighting to consolidate the efforts, to reestablish security.”
“We are asking the Army of Haiti, the [prime minister] everyone, to stand strong with us, to support us so we can eradicate [the violence] that’s spreading like cancer in the country,” said Jean, who has been trying to feed and clothe residents forced into hiding. “It’s time for people to stop being on the run in this country.”
Since 2023, when police killed a gang leader known as Ti-Makak, Kenscoff has been in the sights of armed bandits seeking to tighten their grip by installing another leader in the hills. Those threats finally reached a peak between two weeks ago, Jean said, when residents reported seeing “between 200 to 300 men with big guns.” Police were notified, he said, to try to protect the population of about 60,000.
When he saw no police response, Jean issued his own measures, including imposing a 9 p.m.-to-5 a.m. curfew. The gangs invaded anyway, climbing up the mountain from Carrefour, the sprawling gang-controlled suburb below. A coalition of gang members began arriving Saturday night and Sunday, and launched a full-scale attack early Monday. First they hit, Kafoubèt, just outside of the town of Bongars, and then Qui Croit, the neighboring hamlet.
“They burned people’s homes, vehicles; women, children, young men, all were forced to escape the bandits’ fury,” said Jean, adding he still doesn’t know the extent of the damage.
Some analysts have linked the attack to the opening of a new road in the area that now allows people to travel more safely to the south. In doing so, motorists bypass National Road No. 2, where gangs make money charging exorbitant fees to trucks and buses — or by taking travelers hostage and demanding hefty ransoms. Jean said he’s heard the theory. However, if the issue was solely the road, he believes gangs would have attacked long before now. Either way, he said, they cannot hold back building a road “due to gangsters.” “We believe in development and are going to continue,” Jean said. “We’re not going to collaborate with gangs.”
Dead students
Among the dead are 10 students from the Baptist Haiti Mission in Qui Croit. The missionary group, which has been in Haiti since 1943, had served 700 students until gangs took over both their church and school this week, turning them into a gang headquarters.
Two of the mission’s employees have lost their spouses, the group told the Herald.
“One of our staff members had to hurriedly lay his wife to rest in a tomb without a coffin as he fled for his life; she had been shot and killed, like many others,” said Daniel Jean-Louis, president of Baptist Haiti Mission. “The lives of these peaceful residents have been thrown into complete turmoil, leaving scars that cannot be repaired. This is nothing less than pure acts of evil by men with stone hearts.”
Jean-Louis said that while there were attacks in the nearby community of Fort Jacques last year, nothing compared to the current violence.
“We never could have imagined the closure of more than half a dozen of our schools and churches,” he said.
Unable to get to the communities attacked by the gangs, relatives are relying on the accounts from those who managed to escape.
This is how Joseph learned of his mother’s tragic death — and why he assumes his father, Caristaîn, may also be gone.
For two hours Caristaîn Joseph lay on the ground, a mere yards away from his wife’s bloody corpse. A field hand, crawling through a nearby forest, eventually made it to the property and carried him away on his shoulder.
“They attacked the area again, and he had no choice but to leave my father behind, and his own mother,” Jose Joseph said about the young farmer who initially saved his father’s life and was forced to abandon him under a hail of automatic gunfire. “From what I’ve heard, I can assume my father is dead.”
Joseph last visited Kafou Bèf in October, traveling from Pétion-Ville to help his parents pick out a burial plot. Now, he faces the heartbreaking reality that neither of them will get a proper burial.
Since his mother’s death, Joseph, 59, has been trying to return to his village. He fears that his mother’s decomposing body, like those of others killed in the gang rampage, is being consumed by animals. It’s a devastating reality as the violence, once confined to the poor and working-class neighborhoods of the capital and the lower part of the Artibonite region, has reached even Haiti’s most remote corners. “I hold Haitian authorities responsible,” he said. “The authorities have no plan to respond to the bandits.”
On Wednesday while visiting Paris, the head of Haiti’s presidential council, Leslie Voltaire, cited Kenscoff as an example of a place security forces were making progress and gangs are on the retreat.
But those living the horror say it’s just the opposite, even as the police and Kenyan forces deploy armored vehicles and specialized teams to try to hold the line.
“They don’t have anything under control,” said Gustave Louis, a former lawmaker in Haiti’s Lower House of Deputies. Police, he said, are either too afraid to go into some areas or can’t due to poor or non-existent roads.
Louis said his pastor is among the victims. He was taken hostage at gunpoint and forced to drive gang members around on a motorcycle. When he finally resisted, Louis said, “they killed him.” His own home, Louis said, is now being occupied by gangs.
“The Haiti National Police need to get helicopters and deploy with the international force in the area with a lot of firepower to either arrest the bandits or force them to leave the areas,” he said, adding that then the residents would return.
Then he thought about the homes that have been torched by gangs.
“I don’t know where they would live,” he said, “because many of houses have been burned.”
By JACQUELINE CHARLES/Miami Herald
Jacqueline Charles has reported on Haiti and the English-speaking Caribbean for the Miami Herald for over a decade. A Pulitzer Prize finalist for her coverage of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, she was awarded a 2018 Maria Moors Cabot Prize — the most prestigious award for coverage of the Americas.
