US couple among three missionaries killed by gang in Haiti

An American couple was among the three missionaries shot dead by a gang in front of a church in the Haitian capital. The country’s capital has been affected by extreme violence for months, with deadly attacks on hospitals, prisons and government buildings.

Missions in Haiti, an Oklahoma-based nonprofit founded in 2000, said Davy and Natalie Lloyd and a third person were killed by gunmen in Port-au-Prince on Thursday night.

The third victim was identified by US media as Jude Montis, the Haitian mission director in Haiti.

“Davy, Natalie and Jude were shot by the gang around 9pm this evening,” Missions in Haiti said on its Facebook page on Friday. “We are all devastated.”

It was said that the missionaries were attacked by a gang with three vehicles.

“Davy was brought to the house tied up and beaten,” it said. “Then the gang took our trucks, loaded everything they wanted into them and disappeared.”

Members of another gang then arrived and “went into attack mode,” the group added.

In response to the deaths, the White House called for the rapid deployment of a Kenyan-led multinational force to Haiti to curb rampant gang violence.

“The security situation in Haiti cannot wait,” a National Security Council spokesman said, stressing that President Joe Biden had pledged in talks with Kenya’s president on Thursday to support the “accelerated deployment” of the force.

“Our deepest condolences go out to the families of those killed, who are feeling unimaginable grief,” the spokesman added.

– Gangs are in control –

A spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also expressed his condolences, calling it “just another example of the violence that spares no one in Haiti.”

The main airport partially reopened this week after being closed since early March after the powerful and well-armed gangs that control much of the country carried out a coordinated killing spree that they said was aimed at overthrowing then-Prime Minister Ariel Henry.

Henry, who has since resigned, was unable to return to his homeland at the time of the attacks due to the activities of the gangs themselves, even though he was abroad.

Haiti has suffered from poverty, natural disasters, political instability and violence for decades. Since the assassination of Jovenel Moise in 2021, the country has been without a president and there is no longer a parliament.

The last elections were held in 2016 and the new transitional government is struggling to assert its authority. Food shortages are present, tens of thousands are displaced and the health system is on the verge of collapse.

During his visit to Washington, Kenyan President William Ruto assured that his country’s security mission in Haiti would be aimed at breaking up the gangs.

The Biden administration had been searching intensively for a country that could take the lead in the mission in Haiti after ruling out sending US troops, which have intervened in the country several times in the past.

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