Loyalists want Aristide back

2004-10-08 20:17

Port-au-Prince - A bonfire of tyres and trash sent acrid smoke wafting through the streets on Friday while sporadic gunshots rang out in a barricaded slum where loyalists of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide are demanding his return from exile.

No killings were reported on Friday after more than a week of violence in Haiti, but Aristide supporters had blocked streets with car chassis and wooden market stalls in the Bel Air slum.

Market vendors largely stayed off the streets. Poulare Genold, a 25-year-old phone repairman, said many were scared to go to work due to frequent bursts of gunfire.

"There's no security in Haiti. It was better when Aristide was here. Right now things are very bad. We can't even open a business," he said.

United Nations peacekeepers from Brazil sat atop four armoured vehicles at the National Palace, just blocks from Bel Air, while other troops joined police patrolling the slum La Saline a day after two beheaded corpses were seen in the street, one of them badly charred.

"We won't hesitate to use force if necessary to eliminate these criminals and bring calm to the Haitian people," Brazilian General Americo Salvador de Oliviera said on Friday, adding that UN troops had seized about a dozen guns and several knives in the past week.

Troops in the 3 000-member UN force have been stretched thin while trying to keep order in the northwestern city of Gonaives, devastated by floods from Tropical Storm Jeanne last month that killed at least 1 870 and left some 884 missing, most presumed dead.

Violence erupted in Gonaives on Thursday as stone-throwing crowds attacked aid workers who were preparing to hand out food, hitting one worker in the mouth with a rock, Catholic Relief Services spokesperson David Snyder said.

Police, meanwhile, detained two employees of the state-run phone company on Thursday on suspicion of orchestrating violence that has left at least 20 dead in Port-au-Prince since Aristide loyalists stepped up protests on September 30.

Police chief Leon Charles said on Friday the two Teleco employees included an assistant to the security director and another security employee.

Aristide's opponents accuse him of having doled out jobs to cronies at Teleco. The phone monopoly announced in May it was cutting about 2 000 jobs, saying some were pro-Aristide street thugs who picked up paychecks but did no work.

Police have detained more than 100 people for questioning in the violence, Charles said.

Officials said three policemen were beheaded by Aristide backers last week as part of a campaign called "Operation Baghdad."

Demonstrators have been demanding Aristide's return from exile in South Africa and an end to "the invasion" - referring to UN Marines who arrived as Aristide left in February and UN troops who took over in June.

- AP