Port-au-Prince

The Haitian government has deployed specialist anti-gang police units, it said Friday, after an apparent massacre northwest of Port-au-Prince that the United Nations said left at least 70 dead.

Carried out early Thursday in the town of Pont Sonde, some 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the capital, the attack saw scores of houses and vehicles torched after gang members opened fire.

Grotesque monster, sexual predator, ruthless beast. The testimonies of dozens of abused women reveal today that billionaire businessman Mohamed Al-Fayed was a horrific serial rapist.

A governing council tasked with filling a leadership vacuum in Haiti and restoring a semblance of order was formally established Friday in the Caribbean nation, which has been rocked by an explosion of gang violence.

Haiti's National Library was looted Wednesday by armed gangs terrorizing the Caribbean nation's capital Port-au-Prince, its director told AFP, as UNESCO condemned multiple "devastating" attacks on educational and artistic institutions in the city.

Library director Dangelo Neard said the history of Haiti — the Western Hemisphere's second-oldest republic — was being threatened.

Haiti's gangs have made advances in Port-au-Prince, a U.N. official reported Thursday, with political parties inching toward forming a transition government and new bloodshed roiling the troubled Caribbean nation.

Police in Port-au-Prince confirmed that a major gang leader, Ernst Julme, known as Ti Greg, was slain in a clash with security forces. Julme led the Delmas 95 gang.

The U.N. children's agency chief offered a dire assessment Sunday of the chaotic situation in Haiti, saying it was "almost like a scene out of 'Mad Max,'" which depicted a violent and lawless post-apocalyptic future.

"Haiti is a horrific situation," UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell told CBS talk show "Face the Nation."

With Haiti's capital spiraling deeper into gang violence, members of several diplomatic missions, including staff from the United States and the German ambassador, began leaving Port-au-Prince Sunday.

Haiti's main port was forced to close Thursday as chaotic gang violence engulfed the Caribbean nation and the United States told the absent Haitian prime minister to enact "urgent" political reform.

The U.N. Security Council expressed its concern over the deteriorating situation in violence-gripped Haiti on Wednesday, as Washington ramped up pressure on absent Prime Minister Ariel Henry to secure a political settlement.

A powerful Haitian gang leader warned Tuesday that the chaos engulfing the capital Port-au-Prince will lead to civil war and "genocide" unless Prime Minister Ariel Henry steps down.