47 Murdered in Church

Gang fighters killed 47 people and dragged more than 50 others away during a nighttime raid on a Haitian farming town, with victims gunned down inside a church where they had run for safety.

Story Snapshot

Roughly 150 armed gang members attacked Kenscoff, Haiti, on the night of August 23, according to the United Nations human rights office.
Attackers first killed 13 people trying to flee, then chased down 50 more who had hidden inside a church, the UN says.
Haiti’s National Police ordered an investigation into whether complicity or negligence played a role in the response.
The attack fits a wider pattern of gangs pushing beyond Haiti’s capital, where about 1.4 million people have already been forced from their homes.

Gunmen Storm A Church Compound

Armed men swept into Kenscoff, a farming community near Port-au-Prince, on the night of August 23. The United Nations human rights office says about 150 heavily armed gang members took part. They killed 13 people who tried to run, then hunted down 50 more who had sought shelter inside a church compound, according to UN spokesperson Marta Hurtado.

United Nations spokesman Stéphane Dujarric called the assault a massacre. He said the attack killed at least 47 people, including 22 who were reportedly executed inside the church where they had gone for safety. Amnesty International separately confirmed the death toll and said dozens more were abducted, noting that many victims were displaced people already sheltering at the site.

Local Officials Confirm Deaths And Missing Residents

Kenscoff Mayor Massillon Jean told reporters that a justice of the peace and the chief prosecutor confirmed multiple deaths on the ground. He said 15 people remained missing days after the attack. Early counts from local authorities put the toll lower, at 25 dead, before the United Nations later raised the confirmed number to 47. That kind of shift is common in the chaotic hours after mass-casualty attacks in Haiti.

Multiple outlets reported the same core details. Attackers raided a displaced-persons camp based inside a church, executed several people, and left dozens wounded. Haiti’s Prime Minister’s office issued condolences to the victims’ families. The exact final numbers of injured and kidnapped are still being pieced together, but every credible source agrees on the same basic scale: dozens dead, dozens more taken.

Police Order A Probe Into Their Own Response

Haiti’s National Police publicly ordered an investigation into the attack. Officials said they need to determine whether “complicity or negligence” allowed the massacre to happen. That order came directly from police leadership, not from outside critics, showing the scale of the failure was serious enough that Haitian authorities felt compelled to examine their own conduct.

Part Of A Growing National Crisis

Kenscoff sits inside a much larger collapse. United Nations reporting says gang violence has forced about 1.4 million people from their homes nationwide, a level UN human rights expert William O’Neill called “unprecedented”. Gangs have expanded well beyond Port-au-Prince into farming towns and rural regions once considered safer, using mass killings and kidnappings to seize territory and terrify residents into submission.

Pope Leo XIV today said that he is praying for the people of Haiti after dozens were killed in an attack on a church in Kenscoff, with many also kidnapped:

'Tragic reports are emerging from Haiti of the horrific massacre carried out in Kenscoff, in which numerous people have… pic.twitter.com/BGypEIcQGl

— Catholic Arena (@CatholicArena) August 30, 2026

United Nations figures show more than 1,400 people were killed and 656 injured in Haiti between April and June alone, a slight drop from the first three months of the year but still a brutal pace. For families in Kenscoff burying loved ones and searching for kidnapped relatives, that broader statistic is now their own lived reality. Haitians who spoke to reporters after the attack demanded answers about why armed men could roam freely enough to slaughter dozens inside a place of worship.