Violent Haitian gang releases women and children after mass kidnapping and deadly attack

Six chil­dren and sev­en women were re­leased by a gang in Haiti that had kid­napped more than 50 peo­ple af­ter launch­ing a dead­ly at­tack on a com­mu­ni­ty near the cap­i­tal, Port-au-Prince, near­ly a week ago, ac­cord­ing to UNICEF.

The Unit­ed Na­tions chil­dren’s agency said late Fri­day that among those re­leased are three chil­dren un­der the age of 2, a 7-year-old and two teenage girls.

“This re­lease of­fers a rare mo­ment of hope amid the vi­o­lence threat­en­ing chil­dren in Haiti,” said Yan­nig Dus­sart, UNICEF’s deputy rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Haiti. “The Ken­scoff ab­duc­tion was not an iso­lat­ed in­ci­dent but an­oth­er stark re­minder of the scale and fre­quen­cy of at­tacks on chil­dren across the coun­try.”