Kenscoff, Haiti: 47 killed, gang threatens hostages

An armed gang stormed the settlement of Kenscoff in the hills above Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, on Sunday, August 23, leaving at least 47 people dead and more than 50 kidnapped. On Tuesday, August 25, the United Nations called the attack likely the largest mass kidnapping in Haiti in several years, while one of the raiding group’s leaders threatens in a video to kill the hostages if authorities try to retake the area by force.

According to the UN Integrated Office in Haiti, known by its acronym BINUH, at least five children are among the 47 killed. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the attack on Tuesday, saying 22 victims were shot in the courtyard of a church where they had sought refuge. “The relentless attacks by gangs on communities and the loss of life point to an alarming security situation in Haiti,” Guterres said.

The attack is attributed to the Viv Ansanm gang coalition, which Washington has designated a foreign terrorist organization. According to a report by the Associated Press, its members torched 25 houses during the raid, and Kenscoff Mayor Jean Massillon said the dead include two municipal employees, among them his own cousin, who served on his security detail. “The brutality of this crime reminds us that we must work even harder every day to bring peace to the community,” Massillon said, adding that he believes the state will keep working to root out the gangs in Kenscoff.

Who is Izo 2, and what did he threaten?

The attack was led by a man who identified himself as Izo 2, also known as Didi, in a video posted on social media. According to analysts who track Haitian gangs, he appears to lead a local cell operating in the name of, and in coordination with, Johnson Andre, known as Izo, one of the country’s most powerful gang leaders. In the video, he threatened Vladimir Paraison, the director of the Haitian National Police.

Paraison, if a single one of our soldiers is harmed, I will kill them all.

He said, referring to the hostages. The Haitian National Police said in a statement on Tuesday that Paraison had ordered an investigation into whether the attack occurred due to complicity or negligence on the part of security personnel, and that he had sent additional special units to the area. “It is our duty to protect the civilian population,” Paraison said. Police rejected claims by some survivors that residents had not been adequately protected ahead of the attack.

Why is the gang threatening to massacre the hostages?

Romain Le Cour, head of the Haiti Observatory at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, said the threat to execute the hostages looks designed as a trap for the authorities. If security forces do not act, it looks as though they failed to protect the hostages, and if they do act and hostages die, the gangs will shift the blame onto the state. “This is a major political and security test, for the government, for the police and for the international mission,” Le Cour said.

He believes the attack may also have been intended to force Haitian police and the UN’s anti-gang forces to divert additional resources from other parts of the country, given their already thin manpower, and to send a message ahead of the general elections set for December 13, the country’s first in more than a decade. “This is a message to the government and the police that their claims of protection do not match reality. The gangs are saying: when we decide to attack, we can, and we will succeed,” Le Cour said.

Armed groups currently control an estimated 70 percent of Port-au-Prince’s territory and parts of the country’s central region, and the violence has displaced a record 1.5 million people across Haiti. Figures for the January to June period vary by source: The Washington Times, in a report carried by the Associated Press, put the death toll in the country at more than 3,100 for that period, while a version of the same report published by San Diego public broadcaster KPBS, citing UN statistics released Tuesday, cited more than 3,050 killed over the same stretch.

The first major attack on Kenscoff took place in January 2025, followed by sporadic clashes in the hills around the town center, until Sunday’s raid became the largest yet. Massillon warned that gangs are still circling the outskirts of Kenscoff and that information on the scale of the attack is still coming in. Haiti, meanwhile, remains under pressure to show, before the December elections, that state institutions, not armed groups, control its own territory.