A Haitian government-deployed “Kamikaze” drone is being blamed for the deaths of at least eight children and at least three adults in a Port-au-Prince neighborhood where a gang leader was reportedly celebrating his birthday at the time of the deadly strike.

Among the victims was 4-year-old Merika Saint-Fort Charles. Her mother and grandmother told the Miami Herald Merika was playing with other kids at around 8 p.m. in their Simon Pelé neighborhood, when they heard a loud explosion from the sky.

“The children were sitting here playing,” Mimose Duclaire, the girl’s grandmother, said. “While they were playing, I heard a ‘boom’ and when I looked I saw her both of her knees were broken and her head was split open.”

The child’s name appeared on an online post alongside other reported victims, including a pregnant woman. Duclaire said they rushed her granddaughter, gushing blood, to a hospital, but she died on the way.

“We want justice,” Duclaire, 52, said. “We need justice.”

Collateral damage

The National Human Rights Defense Network in Port-au-Prince said at least eight children died during the strike. The incident occurred Saturday evening when a Haiti National Police task force launched two kamikaze drones during a gathering of gang members to celebrate the birthday of local gang leader, Albert Steevenson, alias Djouma, in Simon Pelé, west of the Airport Road.

A flier circulating online announced the birthday festivities by referring to Djouma as “King Jouma.”

This is the second time that the government’s deployment of explosive drones is being blamed for the deaths of civilians. Earlier this month, images circulated on social media showing corpses lying face down on the ground and people being evacuated in a vehicle after a suicide drone was launched. At the time, human rights groups put the death toll at 11.

Pierre Esperance, the head of National Human Rights Defense Network, said the group’s conservative estimate is that at least eight children and three adults lost their lives, while at least four gang members were killed and another seven were injured. They also have reports of 13 others, not affiliated with gangs, seriously injured, including six children.

The organization is continuing to speak with victims, he said, to get a clearer picture of how many people were killed and what happened.

For now, he said, the culprit appears to be the same lack of coordination and oversight that led to the deaths of two members of a police SWAT team in August, when a drone exploded in the hills above Port-au-Prince, and later led to the 11 civilian deaths, he said.

“We’ve always said that the use of drones have to be coordinated with the security forces,” Esperance said. “This is why you have collateral damage. And what’s worse is that you have this... while gang leaders are freely moving in a procession, and going from one regional department to the other without a worry.”

Haiti Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé began allowing the use of drones in the fight against armed gangs earlier this year after he decided to hire a private military firm founded by Erik Prince, the former founder of the Blackwater Security firm. Despite the use of the drones, no prominent leader of Haiti’s’ powerful criminal groups has been neutralized, said Esperance, even as civilian deaths are rising.

“If they cannot effectively use the drones they need to stop their use,” Esperance said.

Haitian authorities have not said anything about the incident, and efforts to reach police officials and others involved with the task force that works out of the prime minister’s office were unsuccessful.

The use of weaponized drones has worried foreign diplomats and human rights observers, who privately have expressed concerns about the collateral damage when a strike misses its target. Haitians have been discussing the shocking incident throughout the day as photos of the dead children circulating on social media sparked outrage.

While Merika’s grandmother said they were nowhere near the festivities for the gang leader, others reportedly were.

“During this celebration, the leader of the armed gang distributed gifts to the children,” Esperance said.

Duclaire said she doesn’t understand why there continues to be civilian victims in Haiti. The family feels abandoned.

“There isn’t anywhere here you don’t have gunmen,” she said. “I don’t understand why we keep being victims.”

She was the primary caregiver for the child.

“We have to now put her body in the morgue, and we don’t have anything,” Duclaire said. “No one has told us anything.”

“This was my only child,” Gessica Charles, 22, said. “I feel like I could kill myself. I baptized her, and she was preparing to start school.”

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