17 American missionaries including children were kidnapped in Haiti | News

Media reports said they were leaving an orphanage in Port-au-Prince when they were kidnapped.

According to media reports, 17 Christian missionaries from the United States, including children, were kidnapped by gang members in the Haitian capital.

The New York Times quoted a Port-au-Prince security official as saying that the missionaries were kidnapped on a bus on Saturday.

According to reports, the organization is leaving the orphanage and heading to the airport to send some members.

Agence France-Presse also quoted security sources as saying that the organization is controlled by an armed group that has been carrying out theft and kidnapping in the area between Port-au-Prince and the border of the Dominican Republic for months.

The Associated Press stated that the US-based Christian Aid Department has sent messages to various religious missions that the kidnapped groups have been establishing orphanages in Haiti.

According to the Associated Press, the one-minute message said: “This is a special prayer alert.” “Pray for gang members to repent.”

The source added that the mission’s field director is cooperating with the U.S. Embassy. The family of the field director and another unidentified man stayed at the mission’s base, while other people visiting the orphanage were kidnapped.

No other details are immediately available.

A spokesman for the US government stated that they were aware of reports of kidnapping.

“The welfare and safety of American citizens abroad is one of the highest priorities of the State Department,” the spokesperson said, declining to comment further.

After President Jovenel Moise was shot to death in his private home on July 7, and after an August 7.2 earthquake in southwest Haiti that killed more than 2,200 people, Haiti fell into trouble again. The plight of gang-related kidnappings surges. .

According to the authorities, gangs demanded ransoms ranging from several thousand dollars to more than one million dollars.

Last month, a deacon was killed in front of a church in Port-au-Prince, and his wife was kidnapped.

According to data from the Human Rights Analysis and Research Center, a civil society organization in the capital of Haiti, more than 600 kidnappings were recorded in the first three quarters of 2021, compared with 231 in the same period last year.