18328: (Chamberlain) 14 police reported killed in Haiti ambushes (later story) (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Marco Trujillo

     GONAIVES, Haiti, Feb 7 (Reuters) - Haitian police trying to take back
the poor country's fourth-largest city from an armed gang opposed to
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide were gunned down in street ambushes on
Saturday, and at least 14 were killed, according to radio reports.
     A column of up to 150 police special forces rolled into the northern
city of Gonaives alongside four-wheel-drive vehicles, but were met by
burning barricades of masonry, tipped-over buses and tires, and volleys of
gunfire from all sides.
     The police column was allowed to move some way into the city before
being ambushed from all sides by small bands of fighters. Gunfire rattled
through the rubble-strewn, smoky streets of the ghostly empty city.
     Independent Radio Metropole said at least 14 policemen were killed. A
Reuters Television cameraman filmed one dead police officer and saw another
fall after being hit by bullets. At least one civilian bystander was
wounded, shot through both cheeks.
     The failure to restore order marked a major challenge to Aristide, a
former Roman Catholic priest once hailed internationally as a champion of
the Caribbean nation's fragile democracy but who opponents now accuse of
corruption and political thuggery.
     Until last year, Gonaives, 105 miles (170 km) from the capital
Port-au-Prince, used to be seen as firmly in the pro-Aristide camp,
terrorized by a pro-government militia called the Cannibal Army and headed
by Amiot Metayer.
     But Metayer's brother, Buter Metayer, who is leading the current
revolt, turned his gunmen against Aristide after blaming the embattled
president for Amiot Metayer's death last September in a gangland-style
murder.
     Buter Metayer began taking control of Gonaives on Thursday after his
militia attacked a police station and burned it to the ground. Seven
people, including three police officers, were killed and 22 wounded in the
shootout.
     Aristide addressed a huge crowd of passionate supporters in one the
poorest slums of Port-au-Prince on Saturday and vowed that police would
take back Gonaives from the "terrorists." Haiti no longer has an army.
     But Gonaives, a city of about 200,000 people, was prepared.
     Gunmen, aged from 15 years to around 30, took up position in side
streets and on balconies, armed with weapons like M-16 rifles equipped with
sniper sights and grenade launchers, according to the Reuters Television
cameraman.
     "We are children, we are not terrorists. We are doing this for the
people of Haiti," one rebel who called himself T. Will told Reuters
Television.
     Forced to retreat, the remaining police holed up in a school, unable
to escape from the city where Haiti declared its freedom in 1804 from
slavery and French rule to become the world's first black republic.
     Police in the small town of Saint Marc, around two-thirds of the way
to Gonaives from Port-au-Prince, had either left their police station or
been driven out under attack from a local armed group, according to radio
reports that could not be independently confirmed.
     The former Cannibal Army militia in Gonaives, now called the
Artibonite Resistance Front or Front for Aristide's Departure, had pledged
to move on to "liberate" other northern Haitian cities.
     With dozens killed in recent months in clashes between Aristide
supporters and his opponents, the president is under rising pressure to
resign midway through his second term.
     At the heart of the dispute lies flawed parliamentary elections in
2000, but the standoff has prevented a new vote from taking place. Blaming
his foes for the violence, Aristide has vowed to stay on until his mandate
ends in 2006.