‘It was a massacre’: Haiti gangs carry out mass killings across the country

Using dozens of verified videos, photographs, witness testimony and satellite imagery, the Guardian has reconstructed the massacre in Jean-Denis in March. Photograph: The Guardian

It is 2am when the gunshots begin. The neighbourhood in rural Haiti is asleep. “Pow, pow, pow – quick gunfire coming towards us from all directions,” says Merçide Daniel, a 45-year-old mother of four. “It was the Gran Grif gang coming to take over our neighbourhood and turn it into a base.”

Dozens of men wearing civilian clothes and bandanas, with rifles slung around their necks, swarm through the village, shooting indiscriminately.