PORT-AU-PRINCE – About 15 United States missionaries and their family members were kidnapped by a gang outside the Haitian capital yesterday, a local security source told AFP.
The group of between 15 and 17 people, including children, is being held by an armed gang that for months has been engaged in theft and kidnappings in the area between here and the border with the Dominican Republic, added the source.
A spokesman for the US government declined to provide information.
“The welfare and safety of US citizens abroad is one of the highest priorities of the State Department,” said the official.
“We are aware of these reports and have nothing additional to offer at this time.”
Armed gangs, which for years have controlled the poorest districts of the Haitian capital, have extended their hold to other parts of the city and its surroundings, sowing terror with kidnappings.
More than 600 kidnappings were recorded in the first three quarters of the year compared with 231 over the same period in 2020, according to the Centre for Analysis and Research in Human Rights, a civil society group based here.
For years, Haiti has been paralysed by a deep political and economic crisis, and the July assassination of the Caribbean country’s president Jovenel Moise plunged it even further into turmoil. – AFP, October 17, 2021
