The local director of a mission group in Haiti and a missionary couple from the United States were attacked and fatally shot by gang members after leaving a youth group activity at a church, a family member told The Associated Press.

Thursday’s slayings of Jude Montis, the local director of Missions in Haiti Inc., and Davy and Natalie Lloyd, a young married couple from the US, happened in the community of Lizon in northern Port-au-Prince.

They were killed as the capital crumbles under the relentless assault of violent gangs that control 80 per cent of the capital city while authorities await the arrival of a police force from Kenya as part of a United Nations-backed deployment aimed at quelling gang violence in the troubled Caribbean country.