Haitian mobs fearing a cholera epidemic have killed at least 12 people in recent days whom they accused of trying to spread the disease, including through witchcraft, police said Thursday.

"A dozen people accused of importing cholera to a region that so far has been spared were killed with machetes and stones and their corpses were burned in the streets," a police inspector told AFP.

"These people are accused of witchcraft related to cholera," said local prosecutor Kesner Numa, adding that the attackers believed the victims were trying to "plant a substance that spreads the disease in the region."

The first lynching cases date back to last week. "Since then we have had cases every day, including (murder) attempts that failed," Numa said.

Local communities in the Grand Anse area in Haiti's far southwest were refusing to cooperate with investigations of the killings there, according to officials.

"They really believe that witches are taking advantage of the cholera epidemic to kill," Numa said.

It was not immediately clear if any of the victims had cholera.

Six people were hacked or stoned to death in the town of Chambellan and five others in Marfranc and Dame Marie, the officials said.

According to local journalists, at least three people were killed by mobs in the city of Jeremie, while several others were killed under similar circumstances in surrounding villages.

Health authorities say Grand Anse is the region that has been least affected by the cholera epidemic, which has killed 1,817 in Haiti since the first outbreak in mid-October, according to official figures.

Only five of those deaths have been reported in Grand Anse, about 300 kilometers (185 miles) from the capital Port-au-Prince.

About half of Haiti's population is believed to practice the voodoo religion in some form, though many are thought to also follow other religious beliefs at the same time. Sorcery and spiritual magic have been incorporated into some of the beliefs.

Voodoo evolved out of the beliefs that slaves from West Africa brought with them to Haiti.

It is now deeply rooted in Haitian culture. But Western evangelical movements are also making inroads in Haiti, and religious tensions have risen in the wake of January's catastrophic earthquake that killed 250,000 people and left more than one million homeless.