A UN report released Tuesday details a wave of violence that has swept Haiti’s rural reaches, describing gang raids on villages and alarming levels of food insecurity caused by the targeting of farmers in the country’s historic breadbasket.

The U.N. says gangs are invading Haiti’s rural central region and suffocating a once peaceful area that served as the country’s food basket but that is now plagued by kidnappings, killings and rapes

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said long-awaited international security assistance - requested by Haiti's unelected government a year ago and authorized by the U.N. last month - should be deployed "as soon as possible".

At least 20 criminal groups active in rural Artibonite Valley, said the United Nations Human rights Office and the U.N. Integrated Office in Haiti.