At least 30 people were killed late on Sunday in an attack on Kenscoff, a farming community in the hills south of Port-au-Prince, according to officials cited by Al Jazeera.
Armed men set homes on fire and attacked residents. A church was targeted, as was the home of Jean William Pape, a well-known public health figure. Kenscoff's mayor, Jean Massillon, blamed Viv Ansanm, which the United States designated a foreign terrorist organization last year.
Why this village and not another
Kenscoff sits above the roads leading down to Petion-Ville, where the embassies, the larger hotels and the temporary seat of government are located.
That is the significance of the attack beyond its own toll. Control of high ground above the approach roads is control of who moves in and out of the part of the capital where the state and the international presence still function. Gangs already control roughly 70 percent of Port-au-Prince.
The force that has not arrived
A UN-backed suppression force, mandated to support the Haitian police, has not reached its authorized strength of 5,500.
That single fact explains a great deal about the sequence of events in Haiti over the past two years. A mission that exists on paper and is under-manned in practice does not deter anyone, and each attack that goes unanswered makes the next one cheaper to attempt.
The prime minister's office said: "Kenscoff will not be abandoned." We report the statement; it is a commitment rather than a description of what happened on Sunday.
The scale
More than 3,100 people were killed and 1,189 injured in Haiti between January and June this year, and the UN says gang violence has displaced 1.5 million people.
Voter registration is under way for elections in January, which specialists have warned cannot be conducted safely in current conditions. An election requires people to travel to register, to campaign in public and to gather at polling stations, all of which are what the gangs control.
What we could not establish
We could not establish how many people were injured or displaced by Sunday's attack, whether Pape was at home, how many attackers were involved, whether police responded, or the current deployed strength of the UN-backed force. We verified this account from a single publication, and the attribution to Viv Ansanm is the mayor's.
