At least 47 people were killed and more than 50 abducted in an overnight gang raid on Kenscoff, a hill town above Port-au-Prince, the United Nations said this week. Twenty-two of the dead were executed after seeking shelter at the Ark of the New Covenant Church.

Also known as the Church of the New Covenant Age, the Ark is an evangelical Pentecostal congregation founded in 1974 and led by Bishop Renelus Maxime. Fides, the Vatican’s missionary news agency, said the church stands near the municipal cemetery in the town center and had opened its doors to displaced families before it was burned.

The congregation numbers approximately 535 members and supports a network of 14 rural churches. It has worked with the American charity Chances for Children on feeding programs, mobile medical clinics, and pastoral training.

Haiti is home to the Episcopal Church’s largest diocese by membership, with close to 100,000 baptized members on its rolls. Its parishes, schools, and clinics have been living under the same gang violence now moving into the hills above the capital.

As of Wednesday evening, neither the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti nor the Episcopal Church’s national offices had issued a public statement on the Kenscoff killings.

Men identified with the Viv Ansanm coalition entered Kenscoff on motorbikes between 9:30 and 10:30 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 23. They remained in the town until the early hours of Monday.

It was the first reported incursion into the town center, only minutes from the police station and mayor’s office.

The gunmen burned homes and vehicles, killed livestock, raped women, and carried off civilians. The home of Dr. Jean William “Bill” Pape, the Port-au-Prince physician and founder of the GHESKIO medical organization, was among the properties burned. Pape was abroad at the time.

Kenscoff Mayor Massillon Jean called the raid “a night of terror.” Two municipal employees were among those killed, he said, including a cousin and a member of his security detail.

The Haitian human-rights group RNDDH initially reported 30 to 40 dead and 15 to 20 wounded. It cautioned that the figures were provisional, given poor access to the town and broken communications.

The U.N. Integrated Office in Haiti subsequently reported at least 47 deaths, including five children, and more than 50 kidnappings. Infants were said to be among those taken.

A justice of the peace accompanying Port-au-Prince prosecutors later confirmed 25 bodies and 15 missing people. In Haiti, early casualty figures tend to be estimates rather than statistics.

A gang leader known as Izo 2, also called Didi, posted a video said to show almost 20 captives, including children. He warned Haitian National Police acting director Vladimir Paraison against using drones against the gangs.

“If any of our soldiers are hurt, I will kill all of them,” he said of the hostages.

Izo 2 is said to operate in Kenscoff for Johnson André, known as Izo, leader of the 5 Segond gang. The raid may be among the largest mass kidnappings in Haiti in recent years.

The office of Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé said Kenscoff would not be abandoned and promised that state authority would be restored “without weakness and without delay.”

Residents were less impressed. They demanded the resignation of the local police chief and blocked streets with overturned cars. The commune has declared three days of mourning beginning Aug. 31.

Kenscoff was once a cool-weather farming community and weekend refuge for Port-au-Prince’s professional classes. It supplied produce to the capital and offered security to those able to leave the city. That security is gone.

Viv Ansanm struck the commune hard in January 2025. U.N. figures for the following two months recorded more than 260 people killed, 200 homes burned, and 3,000 people displaced.

Another assault in early July reportedly left scores dead and drove nearly 6,000 residents from their homes. Sunday’s raid was the largest reported attack on the town center.

Kenscoff sits on the approaches to Pétion-Ville, the last substantial area of the West Department not fully controlled by gangs and the temporary seat of what remains of the Haitian government.

Archbishop Max Leroy Mésidor of Port-au-Prince, president of the Haitian bishops’ conference, condemned the killings and said the warning signs had long been apparent. “The blood must no longer continue to flow in Haiti,” he said.

Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski called Haiti “still a house on fire” and urged the United States to reconsider ending Temporary Protected Status for Haitians. The gangs, he said, were now moving into the country’s “nicer neighborhoods.” Kenscoff was one of those neighborhoods.

Churches have become both shelters and targets. Catholic reporting last year recorded scores of parishes in the Archdiocese of Port-au-Prince closed or abandoned because of gang violence. Saint Nicolas de Kenscoff, the Roman Catholic parish, had already been listed among those unable to function. It was not attacked on Sunday.

Bishop Joseph Gontrand Décoste of Jérémie told Aid to the Church in Need this month that the gangs see the Church as “the last remaining bulkhead — moral, ethical, spiritual and prophetic,” and therefore as an institution to be eliminated. One seminarian has been murdered and two priests kidnapped during the first seven months of 2026.

The Episcopal Diocese of Haiti knows the territory. Holy Trinity Cathedral in Port-au-Prince was destroyed in the 2010 earthquake and has never been rebuilt. Its temporary worship site was later lost to gang control.

In 2024, diocesan officers told The Living Church that most Episcopal congregations in and around Port-au-Prince had closed because parishioners could no longer travel safely to church. Parishioners have been kidnapped. Schools and medical institutions have been disrupted. Clergy have scattered.

The diocese has spent much of the past decade without a settled bishop and has been divided between rival standing committees. It has also been caught up in the criminal case arising from a 2022 container consigned to the church that authorities said held firearms, ammunition, and counterfeit currency.

An appeals court this spring ordered several diocesan clergy and staff to stand trial. The diocese says it was the victim of the scheme. The courts will decide the question.

The Episcopal Church has spoken forcefully about Temporary Protected Status for Haitians in the United States. It has been less vocal about the safety of Haitian Episcopalians trying to worship, teach, travel, and live amid the collapse of civil order.

Some 1.5 million Haitians are internally displaced. More than 3,100 people were reported killed during the first six months of 2026. A constitutional referendum and the first round of presidential and legislative elections are scheduled for Dec. 13.

The U.N.-backed Gang Suppression Force is still working toward its promised complement of 5,500 personnel. Officials in New York and Port-au-Prince continue to describe the security situation as “alarming.”

The people who took refuge at the Ark of the New Covenant Church did not need that assessment. They had already fled violence once. The gangs came on motorbikes, killed those they found, burned the building, and carried off the survivors.