PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- The leader of the 400 Mawozo gang that police say is holding 17 members of a kidnapped missionary group is seen in a video released Thursday saying he will kill them if he doesn't get what he's demanding.
The video posted on social media shows Wilson Joseph dressed in a blue suit, carrying a blue hat and wearing a large cross around his neck.
"I swear by thunder that if I don't get what I'm asking for, I will put a bullet in the heads of these Americans," he said in the video.
He also threatened Prime Minister Ariel Henry and the chief of Haiti's National Police, Leon Charles, as he spoke in front of the open coffins that apparently held several members of his gang who were recently killed.
"You guys make me cry. I cry water. But I'm going to make you guys cry blood," he said.
Earlier this week, authorities said that the gang was demanding $1 million per person, although it wasn't immediately clear that included the five children in the group, among them an 8-month-old. Sixteen Americans and one Canadian were abducted, along with their Haitian driver.
The missionaries are with Ohio-based Christian Aid Ministries, which held a news conference before someone posted the video of the gang leader.
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Weston Showalter, spokesman for the religious group, said that the families of those who'd been kidnapped are from Amish, Mennonite and other conservative Anabaptist communities in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Oregon and Ontario, Canada.
The gang leader's death threat added to the already intense concern in and around Holmes County, Ohio, where Christian Aid Ministries is based and has one of the nation's largest concentrations of Amish, conservative Mennonite and related groups. Many members of those groups have supported the organization through donations or by volunteering at its warehouse.
"Many people in the community feel helpless, but they also realize the power of prayer and the power of our historic theology," added Marcus Yoder, executive director of the Amish & Mennonite Heritage Center in Millersburg, including the Anabaptist belief in nonresistance to violence.
The same day that the missionaries were kidnapped, a gang also abducted a Haiti university professor, according to a statement that Haiti's ombudsman-like Office of Citizen Protection issued on Tuesday. It also noted that a Haitian pastor abducted earlier this month has not been released despite a ransom being paid.
UNICEF reported 71 women and 30 children were kidnapped this year, up from 59 women and 37 children last year.
"Nowhere is safe for children in Haiti anymore," Jean Gough, UNICEF regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean, said in a statement. "Whether on their way to school, at home or even at church, girls and boys are at risk of being kidnapped anywhere, at any time of the day or night."
Meanwhile, hundreds of demonstrators blocked roads and burned tires in Haiti's capital to decry a severe fuel shortage and a spike in insecurity and to demand that the prime minister step down.
The scattered protest took place across the Delmas neighborhood of Port-au-Prince.
In addition to kidnappings, the gangs also are blamed for blocking gas distribution terminals and hijacking supply trucks, which officials say has led to a shortage of fuel. Many gas stations now remain closed for days at a time, and the lack of fuel is so dire that the CEO of Digicel Haiti announced on Tuesday that 150 of its 1,500 branches countrywide are out of diesel.
Information for this article was contributed by Kantele Franko and Peter Smith of The Associated Press.
