Geneva (AFP) – At least 2,680 people were killed in Haiti in the first five months of the year, the United Nations said Friday, voicing alarm at widening gang violence.

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere with swathes of the country under the control of rival armed gangs who carry out murders, rapes and kidnappings.

UN human rights chief Volker Turk said the crisis had plummeted to a new low, with gangs extending their reach beyond the coastal capital Port-au-Prince into central regions.

The UN Human Rights Office said at least 2,680 people had been killed between January 1 and May 30, including 54 children.

Those figures were from information it has been able to verify, but it said the true toll would likely be far higher.

At least 957 others had been wounded and 316 kidnapped for ransom, it added. Sexual violence by gangs and their recruitment of children was also still rising.

"Alarming as they are, numbers cannot express the horrors Haitians are being forced to endure on a daily basis," Turk said in a statement.

"I am horrified by the ever-increasing spread of gang attacks and other human rights abuses beyond the capital, and deeply concerned by their destabilising impact on other countries in the region."

With law enforcement struggling to restore security, mobs and self-defence groups were taking matters into their own hands, leading to even more human rights abuses, he added.

Turk cited deadly clashes between gangs and so-called self-defence groups, including one in which at least 25 were killed with machetes.

While the country is nominally run by a transitional government, there has been a fresh surge of violence since February, with gangs pressing into previously safe areas.

Gangs control 85 percent of Port-au-Prince, according to the UN, and have stepped up attacks on areas not yet under their control.

A record number of people -- almost 1.3 million -- have been forced to flee their homes in Haiti due to violence, the UN's migration agency said Wednesday.

Turk said the coming months would test the international community's ability to take stronger action to stabilise Haiti and the wider region.