UNITED NATIONS, United States (AFP)— A massacre of more than 200 people in Haiti this month followed a gang-ordered manhunt that saw victims, many of them elderly, pulled from their homes and shot or killed with machetes, the UN said Monday.

The victims were suspected of involvement in voodoo and accused by a gang leader of poisoning his child, with the suspects taken to a “training center” where many were dismembered or burned after being killed.

A civil society organisation had said at the time that the gang leader was convinced his son’s illness was caused by followers of the religion.

“On the evening of December 6, (Micanor Altes) ordered the members of his gang  — around 300 — to carry out a brutal ‘manhunt.’ They stormed into about ten alleys of the (Port-au-Prince) neighborhood and forcibly dragged the victims out of their homes,” said the report, authored jointly by the UN office in Haiti, BINUH, and the UN Human Rights Commissioner (OCHR).

In the days that followed, the gang returned to the neighborhood, abducting adherents from a voodoo temple, targeting individuals suspected of tipping off local media and slaughtering people seeking to escape.

Some of the bodies “were then burned with gasoline, or dismembered and dumped into the sea,” the report concluded.

A total of 134 men and 73 women were killed in total over six days, the report said.

A mosaic of violent gangs control most of the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince. The impoverished Caribbean country has been mired for decades by political instability, made worse in recent years by gangs that have grown in strength and organisational sophistication.

Despite a Kenyan-led police support mission, backed by the United States and UN, violence has continued to soar.

“According to BINUH and OHCHR, since January 2024, more than 5,358 people have been killed and 2,155 injured,” the report said.

“This brings the total number of people killed or injured in Haiti to at least 17,248 since the beginning of 2022.”

The UN Security Council “strongly condemned the continued destabilising criminal activities of armed gangs and stressed the need for the international community to redouble its efforts to provide humanitarian assistance to the population.”

A spokeswoman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said “these crimes touched the very foundation of Haitian society, targeting the most vulnerable populations.”

Voodoo was brought to Haiti by African slaves and is a mainstay of the country’s culture. It was banned during French colonial rule and only recognised as an official religion by the Haitian government in 2003.

While it incorporates elements of other religious beliefs, including Catholicism, voodoo has been historically attacked by other religions.