HAITI’S growing gang violence is devastating lives, with major crimes rising to a new high, the United Nations special envoy for the conflict-wracked Caribbean nation has warned.

Maria Isabel Salvador told the UN security council on Monday that gangs engage in killings, sexual violence and kidnapping on a daily basis.

She pointed to last week’s incident in which gang members dressed as police officers kidnapped the secretary-general of the High Transitional Council.

The council is responsible for ensuring that long-delayed elections, which were called after the president was killed and Senate left empty, are held.

Ms Salvador said that the security crisis is even more complex because vigilante groups that have taken to fighting the gangs are still active.

Between April 24 and September 30, she said that the UN political mission “registered the lynching of at least 395 alleged gang members across all 10 departments of Haiti by the so-called Bwa Kale vigilante movement.”

Unicef head Catherine Russell echoed Ms Salvador, telling the council: “The crisis in Haiti grows worse by the day.”

An estimated two million people, including 1.6 million women and children, live in areas under gang control, she said, and children are getting killed and injured in crossfire, some on the way to school.

“Others are being forcibly recruited or they are joining armed groups out of sheer desperation,” Ms Russell said.

She said that half of Haiti’s population, including three million children, need aid.

Half of those in need are not getting the support because of insecurity and a lack of funding, Ms Russell said.

So far this year, she said, the UN has received barely 25 per cent of the $720 million (£589m) it needs for humanitarian needs in the country.