Once-quiet village in Haiti northwest now under control of gangs gaining territory
Another rural town in Haiti has fallen to criminal gangs after gunmen on Thursday traveled from the Artibonite region into the neighboring northwest, where they looted homes, burned a police station and set the corpse of a young teacher on fire after reportedly shooting him in the head.
“It is with great pain, the situation we are living,” Rodlet Jean-Baptiste, a community leader from Port-de-Paix, the capital of the northwest, told Radio Television Caraïbes’ Journal Kreyòl Premye Okazyon on Friday morning. “The authorities need to take responsibility.”
The broad daylight attack in Bassin-Bleu, a quiet village nestled between the Artibonite and Northwest regional departments, unfolded on Thursday morning when more than 50 members of the Kokorat San Ras gang invaded the town. The gang, based in the Lower Artibonite, has been trying to gain a foothold in the rural northwest, one of Haiti’s poorest regions and a major jumping off point for migrant smuggling operations to the U.S. and The Bahamas.
“This situation has put the entire population of the Northwest in great distress and anxiety,” Monsignor Charles Peters Barthelus, the Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Port-de-Paix, said Friday, questioning how it was possible for heavily armed gang members to storm the community without any resistance, and why they targeted Bassin-Bleu. “We have seen how the men with guns found a way to enter the city easily without any resistance. They have done all their evil deeds, mistreated, killed people and returned without any problems to their bases.
“So, we in the Northwest department, we are asking what we can do, because we have nowhere else to run,” he added. “What are the police and those responsible at the head of state and the government saying to the population of the Northwest who were already in great trouble....? How can they let this kind of Machiavellian plan be executed so easily throughout the country?”
The latest attack came as Haitian authorities and the country’s struggling police force find themselves trying to deal with multiple situations, including destructive floods in the northwest region that’s over flooding roads and making roads impassable.
Flooding in the northwest
On Friday, the United Nations Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that hundreds of families in communities in the northwest had been washed out of their homes due to severe flooding. Heavy rainfall earlier in the week had caused roads and rivers to overflow. Initial figures indicate that 460 families have been affected and 550 houses flooded.
“Several fishermen are also reported to be missing. Businesses, houses, crops, livestock and fishing activities have been affected,” Stéphane Dujarric, the spokesman for Secretary-General António Guterres, told reporters in New York. “The bridge over the river sustained heavy damage, and roads connecting the town of Port-de-Paix to other communes are now impassable.”
Disaster response volunteers with Haiti’s Office of Civil Protection have been deployed to conduct rapid assessments, he said, and humanitarian partners are also monitoring the situation and coordinating efforts to ensure urgent needs are addressed and identified.
“Those needs include evacuation and clearing of blocked roads; sanitation kits and non-food items, fuel for generators and mosquito nets; among other things,” Dujarric said. “Authorities warn that without urgent action, the situation could worsen as the hurricane season continues.”
Teacher killed, set on fire
Also on Friday, residents in Haiti’s cradle of independence, Gonaives, woke up to burning tires, empty street markets and closed banks as the death of a leading figure of the armed rebellion that led to the overthrow of then President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004 continued to paralyze the city, which is just 33 miles from Bassin-Bleu.
The lifeless body of Wilfort Ferdinand, known as T Will, was found in his vehicle on Tuesday from gunshot wounds while traveling on the road leading to Canal Bois.
A leader in the 2004 resistance front that joined forces with rebel leader Guy Philippe, Ferdinand emerged as an emblematic figure of the protest movement. While it has been suggested his killing is tied to a land dispute, Ferdinand’s supporters and his brother have rejected that assertion. They’ve accused the new Haiti National Police departmental director for the Artibonite of killing T Will and are demanding his arrest. Haiti’s new police chief, André Jonas Vladimir Paraison, has rejected the accusations.
In addition to Gonaives, residents in the port city of St. Marc, also in the Artibonite, remained wary of gang attacks. Last week, armed groups burned a police station in Liancourt in the Lower Artibonite and this week they set a police station on fire in the town of Montrious. St. Marc now finds itself encircled by several gang strongholds.
The latest attacks outside of Port-au-Prince, which is already under the control of armed groups, are yet another example of the precarious security situation Haiti finds itself as a Kenya-led Multinational Security Support mission, foreign contractors and the country’s beleaguered police and small army find themselves unable to successfully battle the gangs.
Though the Trump administration is calling for the creation of a new “Gang Suppression Force” at the United Nations, it remains uncertain whether Washington will find the support it needs at the U.N. Security Council. In addition to agreeing to the force and a new mandate, the council must also agree to partly financing the mission using members nations’ contributions.
‘All the police fled’
On Friday, Jean-Baptiste, the community leader from Port-de-Paix, called for Haitian authorities to take responsibility and protect the public.
“Everybody’s life ought to count,” he said.
The attack in Bassin-Bleu erupted shortly before noon Thursday, he said. Gunmen stormed the village from Gros-Morne and entered homes and churches. They looted them, along with a local citizen’s organization. They set fire to the city hall and local police station.
“All the police fled,” Jean-Baptiste said. Among those killed, he said, was a young teacher, Jhon Guerdy known as “Ti Ge.” “He was shot in the head in the town, and afterwards the men burned him by placing tires on him.”
Videos shared on social media showed the charred body of a man in the middle of a road. Other videos showed people running through a dirty, fast-flowing ovrflowing river trying to get to safety as they carried small babies and some of their belongings.
“Their entire economy has been destroyed,” Jean-Baptiste said of his community. “School is about to reopen. All the small merchants, they’ve lost everything. The government needs to assure the security of people of Bassin-Bleu because the people of Bassin-Bleu can’t take it anymore.”
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The Haiti National Police did not respond to several messages from the Miami Herald about the Bassin-Bleu attack. A Herald writer in Port-de-Paix who spoke with some of the people in the town confirmed Jean-Baptiste’s details.
The U.N. Organization for International Migration said it has received reports of attacks in both Bassin-Bleu and Montrouis, but did not yet have details.
More than 1.3 million Haitians have been internally displaced by the country’s escalating violence. The latest forced displacements are driving up humanitarian needs at a time when money to deal with Haiti’s crisis remains difficult to raise, said Dujarric, the U.N. spokesman.
In addition to underscoring the worsening humanitarian situation, the latest gang assaults show how quickly the armed groups are spreading beyond Port-au-Prince to other rural sectors of the country, where state and police presence are weak and in some cases non-existent. Jean-Baptiste noted that there were only four specialized police officers assigned to Bassin-Bleu.
The Catholic church also noted that there is not a single armored vehicle in the Northwest region, which has been plagued by armed bandits for several years, and there is no place for reinforcements to come quickly.
“If nothing is done urgently for the people of the Northwest, the entire department will be lost,” Barthelus said.
Miami Herald correspondent Ychmuth Corneille contributed from Port-de-Paix, Haiti.
This story was originally published September 19, 2025 at 11:34 AM.
