At least 264 people accused of belonging to gangs have been killed by self-styled militias in Haiti since April, the United Nations special envoy to the crisis-stricken Caribbean country said Thursday, expressing concern over the new trend.

“The emergence of groups that claim to administer justice themselves adds new complexity” to the crisis, as since April the UN political mission in the country (Bureau intégré des Nations unies en Haïti, BINUH) “counted at least 264 alleged gang members who were killed ” by militias, Maria Isabel Salvador emphasized to the Security Council.

With police unable to deal with unprecedented gang violence, which controls most of the capital Port-au-Prince, groups of residents have decided to bring justice to themselves, while the international community has yet to reach a consensus about which country will lead the international armed intervention force that the Haitian government and the UN have been calling for since last year to be deployed.

“The Haitian people are trapped in a nightmare that they are living awake,” commented earlier yesterday the Secretary General of the Organization, Antonio Guterres, who visited Port-au-Prince on Saturday.

“The humanitarian situation is beyond appalling. Inhumane gangs have brought the Haitian population under their control,” he added.

And “there can be no lasting, inclusive political solution without a drastic improvement in the security situation,” the UN chief insisted, repeating for the umpteenth time his call for an international armed force to be sent to help Haitian police “dismantle” the gangs.

This request, which Mr. Guterres had addressed to the SA member states for the first time last October, remains a dead letter. Although some countries have assured that they intend to participate, none has expressed the will to take the lead in such an operation, in a country that has been burned by international interventions in the past.