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With all eyes on West Asia as the US and Israel unleash devastating air strikes on Iran, another deadly conflict is already well underway: the political crisis in Haiti.
According to a new report by Human Rights Watch and flagged by ABC News, drones controlled by Haitian security forces and private military contracts have killed at least 1,243 people between March 1, 2025 and January 21, 2026.
Though the ongoing drone attacks are said to be part of a protracted campaign to reign in gang activity, there are at least 17 children counted among the dead, as well as 43 adults who are confirmed to have been civilian non-combatants. As the chaos of the skirmishes has mostly unfolded over the densely populated capital of Port-au-Prince, the number of innocent victims is only likely to increase — both as civil society groups gain a fuller accounting of the civilian dead, and as further violence rocks the Caribbean city.
Since 2025, Human Rights Watch found, authorities in Haiti or their mercenaries have resorted to using manually-operated quadcopter drones equipped with explosives to target suspected militants. A reported 139 armed drone attacks have taken place over the past year, the most lethal of which claimed 57 lives.
“Dozens of ordinary people, including many children, have been killed and injured in these lethal drone operations,” said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch in the report. “Haitian authorities should urgently rein in the security forces and private contractors working for them before more children die.”
Per the report, evidence shows Haitian police repeatedly attacking vehicles as well as groups of people with suicide drones. While some of the targets of these attacks are armed, Human Rights Watch found no evidence of drone attacks on people that pose an immediate threat to civilian lives.
“These videos bolster the impression that many of the drone attacks are attempts to target and extrajudicially kill people, rather than a law enforcement response that might justify the deliberate, lethal use of force,” the report reads.
Since August of 2025, Blackwater founder and prominent Donald Trump donor Erik Prince has helped deploy hundreds of private mercenaries to Haiti, Al Jazeera has reported. In addition to supplying personnel, Prince has acted as a key advisor to the drone assassination task force responsible for the devastation, which has drawn condemnations from human rights groups for suspected violations of international law.
Blackwater is a private military company responsible for the Nisour Square Massacre in Iraq, a shooting which left 17 civilians dead. (The four contractors responsible were pardoned by Trump during his first stint in the Oval Office.)
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