GANG members attacked a small town in central Haiti on Thursday, killing at least 50 people, including children, according to a human rights group.

Dozens more were injured as the Gran Grif gang burned homes and cars in the town of Pont-Sonde, said Bertide Harace, spokeswoman for the Commission for Dialogue, Reconciliation and Awareness to Save the Artibonite.

“A lot of people ran and left the area,” she told Radio Kiskeya.

A video posted on social media shows a group of people fleeing through the brush, with one woman who was out of breath saying: “Nowhere to go. Nowhere to go.”

In another video, dozens of people start running through a street after hearing rumours that the gang was approaching.

Ms Harace and others criticised police in the nearby coastal city of Saint-Marc, saying they did not mobilise to help people being attacked in Pont-Sonde.

Venson Francois, a government prosecutor based in Saint-Marc, called the attack a “massacre” in an interview with Radio Caraibes.

Dozens of people crowded around a hospital in Saint-Marc where the injured were taken, with one man telling reporters that local authorities are not doing enough to protect people.

The Gran Grif gang was accused of a January 2023 attack on a police station in Liancourt, located near Pont-Sonde, and killing at least six officers.