Two gang assaults on the farming commune of Kenscoff this summer killed at least 164 people, kidnapped 71 others and drove hundreds from their homes — and could have been prevented, or contained, had the state not stripped the town of protection despite clear warnings, one of Haiti’s leading human rights organizations says.
In a report published Sept. 16, the National Human Rights Defense Network (RNDDH) laid out the most complete account to date of the July and August attacks in the mountains above Port-au-Prince, drawing on interviews with judges, police officials, armed civilians, the former head of the local police station and more than 100 victims and their relatives. Beyond the dead and abducted, the group documented at least 23 people wounded, dozens still missing and scores of homes and vehicles burned. It placed much of the blame on the Superior Council of the National Police (CSPN), which it accused of leaving residents exposed.
Kenscoff had long been considered relatively insulated from the gangs’ expansion. That changed in January 2025, when a first massacre over three days left at least 139 people dead or missing and destroyed 43 homes and businesses. RNDDH’s recommendations after that attack, the group says, were never meaningfully acted upon, and violence recurred throughout the year.
In November 2025, authorities moved to reinforce the commune—with help from experts at the French and U.S. embassies—installing fixed posts at strategic points such as Téléco, Panyol, Viard 1, Kafou Malè and Carrefour Maroca, and near the Sainte-Hélène Orphanage. Specialized units of the Haitian National Police (PNH) were deployed, and the Armed Forces of Haiti (FAd’H) guarded Téléco. But over the following months, RNDDH says, elite units were pulled out “for reasons that remain completely unknown,” ultimately cutting the personnel guarding access to Kenscoff by roughly 60 percent.
The July attack
During the night of July 7-8, 2026, armed men struck Robin, a locality in the Grand-Fond section that residents had believed was beyond the gangs’ reach — the very place where officials had relocated survivors of the January 2025 massacre, sheltering them at the Afè Nèg Combit (ANC) school. The only warning, according to the report, came hours earlier, when attackers felled trees to block the roads.
The assailants killed residents across Robin and neighboring areas, then arranged the bodies as barricades before advancing on the ANC displacement camp, where they opened fire on people who had taken refuge and set the site ablaze, burning some victims alive. Among the dead RNDDH documented were entire families, farmers and clergy: an elderly couple, Philomène Alexis and Samson Louis, who died in the fire at their home; three members of one family killed in a house fire in Dopak; and several pastors, including two brothers who led the Chrétienne Christ Sanctifié Church. RNDDH said it also identified at least eight others killed whose relatives could not be located.
The August attack
The late-August assault was far more deliberate, the report found. Days ahead, gangs flew surveillance drones to track police movements and slipped scouts into the town to monitor roads and identify threats. On the afternoon of Aug. 23, according to testimony gathered by RNDDH, several members of the Kenscoff Communal Brigade (BRICK) guarding key positions were disarmed and ordered off their posts — a decision that followed the killing of a local man, Eric Luc, by two brigade members two weeks earlier. The interim executive agent for the commune, Massillon Jean, denied disarming the brigade, saying the town hall has no authority over its operations; the president of the Grand-Fond local council confirmed that the two brigadiers involved in Luc’s death had, in fact, been disarmed.
That evening, around 10 p.m., gunmen advanced on the town center, staging diversionary attacks on multiple areas to pull police away and open a path inside. They killed men, women and children in their homes and as they fled, torched houses, and attacked people sheltering in a church; RNDDH said women and girls were raped, including a 12-year-old. Police officers and some brigade members mounted a defense that kept the gangs from seizing the Kenscoff police station, and reinforcements arrived overnight, but the attackers held parts of the area and continued burning homes through Aug. 24 before withdrawing toward their stronghold in Godet.
The victims RNDDH named included the elderly and the disabled who could not flee, among them a 65-year-old woman executed and burned, and a 70-year-old father of 15 killed at home with his partner. The group also documented the killing and mutilation of a worker at the Kenscoff police station.
Missing accountability
The overall toll RNDDH recorded across the two attacks includes 21 victims between the ages of 65 and 90, 36 women and seven children. The economic damage compounded a farming and livestock economy already battered in 2025, with arable land abandoned because it sits in gang-held territory and livestock stolen. Among the properties burned were the homes of Dr. William Pape, the founder of the renowned medical institute GHESKIO, and a Kenscoff peace-court judge.
The judicial response, RNDDH said, has been thin: officials documented only 26 bodies and a single damaged home, without any systematic accounting of the injured or of material losses — gaps the group warned could obscure the true scale of the crimes and deny victims a path to justice.
RNDDH detailed a cascade of institutional failures. The head of the Kenscoff police station, aware the August attack was being prepared, had asked for two additional armored vehicles on July 27 and for reinforcements the next day; the requests went unanswered. About a week before the assault, an armored vehicle at the Kafou Malè post was removed for lack of personnel, opening another breach. The group pointed to the “passivity” of the CSPN, the “disinterest” of the PNH high command, the leak of sensitive information, and the timing between the brigade’s disarming and the attack as matters demanding investigation. It said the army remains largely absent from Kenscoff, and that the U.N.-backed Gang Suppression Force, deployed to Haiti since May 2026, has been barely visible on the ground.
The report called on the state to protect the population, permanently strengthen security in Kenscoff, establish individual and institutional responsibility, prosecute those responsible, and provide displaced families with financial, medical and psychological support as well as access to justice and reparation. Four new displacement sites — at Fermathe, Cotard, Calebasse and Grande Savane — have sprung up since August, RNDDH said, where conditions are dire, and food aid falls far short of need. On Aug. 28, UNICEF said it had helped secure the release of 13 people, including seven women and six children.
The warnings, RNDDH stressed, are not hypothetical. Days before the report’s release, gunmen attacked Viard 1 and Viard 2 during the night of Sept. 13-14 — fresh evidence, the group said, of the Viv Ansanm coalition’s continued ability to strike at will. The Kenscoff attacks, it concluded, are not isolated incidents but the predictable result of a security apparatus riddled with gaps and of state authorities who failed to act on threats they had already identified.
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