US Peace Corps quits Haiti

2005-06-17 20:40

Port-au-Prince - The US Peace Corps has suspended operations in Haiti and evacuated its 16 volunteers because of increasing violence, officials said on Thursday, even as gunmen wounded two UN peacekeepers during a shootout in a slum.

The withdrawal comes three weeks after the state department warned Americans against travelling to Haiti and ordered non-essential US personnel to leave.

All 16 volunteers left Haiti earlier this week, Peace Corps spokesperson Barbara Daly said.

Peruvian UN soldiers were patrolling the sprawling seaside slum of Cite Soleil in an armoured vehicle when they came under fire from armed gunmen, UN military spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Elouafi Boulbars said.

One soldier was hit in the chest and listed in critical condition, while another soldier was shot in the knee, Boulbars said. Both were being treated at a UN military hospital in the capital, Port-au-Prince. It was unclear if any gunmen were wounded.

Plagued with insecurity, the state department warned there was no effective police force in much of Haiti, beset by gunbattles and kidnappings since the February 2004 armed uprising that toppled president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

An ill-equipped police force and 7 400 UN peacekeepers have struggled to control slums filled with armed gangs, many of them loyal to Aristide.

The Peace Corps volunteers had been working in rural areas on projects including small business development, agricultural assistance and HIV/Aids prevention, Daly said. She said the Peace Corps would consider returning to Haiti "once the situation has stabilised".

"It's very disappointing for us to have to leave," Daly said. "We determined that it was in the best interest of the volunteers that we suspend the programme at this time."

The Peace Corps has been working in Haiti since 1996. It pulled out during the armed uprising that ousted Aristide, returning six months later.

More than 700 people - including 40 police - have been slain in Haiti since September, when Aristide supporters began stepping up calls for his return from exile in South Africa.

Critics accuse the Haitian police of brutality, summary executions and persecution of Aristide loyalists. The interim government says the police are outgunned and outnumbered by politically allied gangsters.

- AP