By DÁNICA COTO Associated Press
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — U.S. officials are working with Haitian authorities to try to secure the release of 12 adults and five children with a U.S.-based missionary group who were abducted by a gang notorious for killings, kidnappings and extortion.
A voice message sent to various religious missions over the weekend from Christian Aid Ministries, based in Holmes County, said the missionaries were on their way home from building an orphanage.
The one-minute message asked for prayers “that the gang members would come to repentance.”
Police say the group was snatched by the 400 Mawozo gang on Saturday.
As authorities seek the release of the group, local unions and other organizations expect to launch a strike Monday to protest Haiti’s worsening lack of security.
The Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation is again struggling with a spike in gang-related kidnappings and other crimes.
The kidnapping of the missionaries came just days after high-level U.S. officials visited Haiti and promised more resources for Haiti’s National Police to help reduce gang violences.
The says the mission’s field director is working with the U.S. Embassy, and that the field director’s family and one other unidentified man stayed at the ministry’s base while everyone else visiting the orphanage was abducted.
Haitian police said Sunday that the 400 Mawozo gang kidnapped the group in Ganthier, a commune that lies east of the capital of Port-au-Prince. The gang’s name roughly translates to 400 “inexperienced men.”
It controls the Croix-des-Bouquets area that includes Ganthier, where authorities say gang members carry out kidnappings and carjackings and extort business owners.