Ja­maican Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness Mon­day said that the au­thor­i­ties will be us­ing Sun­day night’s shoot­ing in­ci­dent that left eight peo­ple dead and sev­er­al oth­ers wound­ed in Claren­don, south of here, to “deal with the gangs once and for all.

“We can­not al­low this in­ci­dent to be treat­ed mere­ly as an­oth­er crim­i­nal act. It is not mere­ly a crim­i­nal act. Or­gan­ised crime vi­o­lence is an act of ter­ror and we must treat them as crim­i­nal ter­ror­ists

“The se­cu­ri­ty forces have been giv­en the di­rec­tions, Op­er­a­tions are al­ready un­der­way from all lev­els. In­tel­li­gence…from in the field, we are seek­ing the sup­port of our part­ners to get those who are over­seas, who are fa­cil­i­tat­ing, di­rect­ing and fund­ing the crim­i­nal op­er­a­tions here. No stone will be left un­turned.

“I want to give the Ja­maican peo­ple the re­as­sur­ance that your gov­ern­ment will use this as the op­por­tu­ni­ty to deal with the gangs once and for all,” Hol­ness told re­porters fol­low­ing an emer­gency meet­ing of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (NEC), adding “it is in­deed a sad day for all of Ja­maica”. Watch video

Po­lice con­firmed that eight peo­ple were killed when three gun­men alight­ed a ve­hi­cle and fired in­dis­crim­i­nate­ly up­on a group of peo­ple who were cel­e­brat­ing the birth­day of a 26 year-old man.

Those killed have been iden­ti­fied as 27-year-old cos­me­tol­o­gist, Kav­el Da­ley, 50 year-old con­struc­tion work­er, Lawrence Fran­cis, 20-year-old cashier, Di­a­mond Ben­nett, and eight-year-old Aiden Bart­ley, a stu­dent of Four Path Pri­ma­ry.

In ad­di­tion, Er­rol Stew­art, a 58-year-old butch­er; Jer­maine Boothe alias “Blacks,” Court­ney Mes­sam alias “Dumm­bie,” and a woman iden­ti­fied on­ly as Mar­garet, were al­so shot and killed.

Po­lice said that a one and a half month old ba­by is among those in­jured and Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Fitz Bai­ley, speak­ing at the news con­fer­ence said high-pow­ered ri­fles and hand­guns were used in the at­tack.

The au­thor­i­ties have is­sued a cur­few in the area, and Bai­ley said that the po­lice are fol­low­ing sev­er­al “sig­nif­i­cant leads” adding “we will en­sure that the per­pe­tra­tors are brought to jus­tice

Bai­ley had on Sun­day night de­scribed the in­ci­dent as one bor­der­ing on ter­ror­ism, and that the shoot­ing was done to in­still fear and in­tim­i­date the com­mu­ni­ty.

Hol­ness told re­porters that the in­ci­dent is a “crim­i­nal act…it is an act on the pub­lic or­der,” and that it goes be­yond the vic­tims.

“It goes be­yond the com­mu­ni­ty in which it was per­pe­trat­ed. It is an at­tack on every Ja­maican. It is an at­tack on every com­mu­ni­ty. The in­ten­tion was not on­ly to harm the vic­tims, the in­ten­tion was not on­ly to spread ter­ror in the lo­cal com­mu­ni­ty.

“No this act is de­signed to spread ter­ror in the na­tion. This is an act of ter­ror, so it can’t be treat­ed as or­di­nary crim­i­nal­i­ty,” a vis­i­bly shak­en Prime Min­is­ter Hol­ness said, adding that the NEC meet­ing had gone be­yond the time al­lo­cat­ed for its de­lib­er­a­tions.

“There are many is­sues in­volved, is­sues we will not go in­to to­day, but the na­tion should be as­sured that we are ex­am­in­ing all di­men­sions of this ter­ror act.

‘We know that per­sons over­seas are in­volved and con­nect­ed in this act. We know that per­sons who are in­car­cer­at­ed present­ly have con­nec­tions in this act. We know that mul­ti­ple gangs are con­nect­ed and in­volved in this act.

“Every gang, every per­son, who in any way fa­cil­i­tat­ed, pro­vid­ed the arms or were in­volved and pulled the trig­gers them­selves we will find you and we will bring you to jus­tice. I want that to be ab­solute­ly clear, we will not treat this as an­oth­er crim­i­nal act,” Hol­ness said.

“We will treat this as an act of ter­ror. There­fore, we have giv­en di­rec­tion to the se­cu­ri­ty forces to launch an all-out as­sault on the gangs that are in­volved. In­deed, any gang that is in­volved.

‘There is no way that eight per­sons can be killed in one in­ci­dent in Ja­maica and the state stands as if noth­ing hap­pen. No, every gang mem­ber, every gang will feel the full force of the state to­day.

‘This must nev­er hap­pen again in Ja­maica,” Hol­ness said, re­call­ing that last No­vem­ber, he had promised the coun­try that the per­sons in­volved in shoot­ing up a pub­lic trans­port that left two chil­dren dead would be ap­pre­hend­ed and brought to jus­tice.

“To­day, I make a sim­i­lar com­mit­ment and every­one who is in­volved in this will be brought to jus­tice in whichev­er form the jus­tice is vis­it­ed up­on them,” Hol­ness said, adding “we have played with gangs for far too long”.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Dr Ho­race Chang told re­porters “this most bru­tal and re­pres­sive act” by a crim­i­nal gang is ‘to­tal­ly in­tol­er­ant and de­signed to dis­rupt and ter­rorise an en­tire com­mu­ni­ty.

“We will re­spond with the most se­vere ac­tion to dis­rupt the crim­i­nals and re-as­sure the law-abid­ing cit­i­zens,” he said, telling re­porters that in­tel­li­gence in­di­cates that in­ter-gang col­lab­o­ra­tion played a part in the at­tack and “we have ac­cept­ed the rec­om­men­da­tions from the se­cu­ri­ty forces of ex­ten­sive cur­fews across cen­tral Claren­don…and south St. Cather­ine where gangs col­lab­o­rate”.

He said the in­ci­dent comes at a time when the se­cu­ri­ty forces have been do­ing ex­ten­sive work in the area and there have been sig­nif­i­cant de­clines in mur­ders.

He said all el­e­ments of the se­cu­ri­ty forces will be mo­bilised and will al­so have the back­ing of the gov­ern­ment.

“We will find and ap­pre­hend, dis­rupt…the crim­i­nal gangs,” Chang said, adding “all ac­tions will start im­me­di­ate­ly”.

For the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary to Au­gust 3 this year, Ja­maica has record­ed 692 mur­ders as com­pared with 820 for the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od.