A gruesome hours-long gang attack in Haiti a couple of days ago left dozens dead, torching homes and cars, while forcing thousands more to run for their lives, in the latest blow to a country that has suffered extreme violence for years.

A gang leader said the bloodshed was meant to cut the capital off from a rice-growing region of Haiti amid starvation conditions.

Even in a country known for extreme levels of violence, the massacre was considered the worst mass killing in several years, experts said, potentially overtaking a 2018 slaughter of 71 people in La Saline, a neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, which was then considered the worst in decades.