PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AFP) — Gunmen in Haiti killed nine people in the latest spasm of violence by the Caribbean nation’s powerful gangs, a community leader said Wednesday.

The gangsters attacked Tuesday evening in the town of Petite-Riviere in central Haiti, Bertide Horace, a spokeswoman for a community association in the surrounding Artibonite region, told AFP.

Two of the fatalities were adolescents and the attackers kidnapped an undisclosed number of people and set fire to houses, Horace said, adding: “We counted nine bodies.”

Video footage of the bodies circulated on social media, as the attack angered residents of the town.

The assault was seen as revenge by gangsters against locals who had helped officers retake control of a police headquarters, she added.

Haiti’s powerful gangs control most of the capital city Port-au-Prince and commit random acts of kidnapping, rape and other extreme violence despite the deployment of a Kenyan-led force that is trying to help the outgunned local police restore some semblance of order.

Over the weekend, nearly 200 people were killed in Port-au-Prince as a gang leader convinced that his son’s illness stemmed from a voodoo spell attacked followers of the religion, according to an organisation called the Committee for Peace and Development.

The United Nations put the death toll at 184, including 127 elderly men and women.

Haiti has suffered from decades of instability but the situation escalated in February when gangs launched coordinated attacks in the capital to overthrow then-prime minister Ariel Henry.

The medical charity Doctors without Borders (MSF) said Wednesday it would partially resume its activities in Port-au-Prince, less than a month after suspending its operations over threats to its staff.

The latest killings bring the death toll this year in Haiti to around 5,000 people, according to the United Nations.