18329: (Chamberlain) Aristide foes seek control of more Haitian cities (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Michael Christie

    SAINT MARC, Haiti, Feb 8 (Reuters) - Embattled Haitian President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide faced his most serious challenge in months of
anti-government protests on Sunday as an armed revolt spread to several
more cities in the impoverished Caribbean nation.
     Anti-government opponents attacked the main police station and threw
up a maze of barricades in Saint Marc, on the road to the port of Gonaives,
where police tried but failed to take back control of the city from an
armed band several hundred strong on Saturday.
     Local radio stations also reported that Aristide foes had attacked the
police headquarters in three other cities, forcing outnumbered policemen to
flee.
     The main police station in Saint Marc, a sprawling port city about 65
miles (105 km) north of the Haitian capital on the road to Gonaives, was
attacked on Saturday and government opponents were in control by Sunday.
     The city's mayor also left town, as did other supporters of the ruling
Lavalas Family party, residents said.
     A local youth said two bystanders were killed when police fired as
their station came under attack, but this could not be independently
confirmed.
     An armed group took over Gonaives, Haiti's fourth-largest city and the
birthplace of its independence from France in 1804, in a bloody assault on
police headquarters and other government buildings on Thursday and Friday
in which seven people were killed.
     Aristide, a former Roman Catholic priest once hailed as a champion of
the country's fledgling democracy but now accused by opponents of
corruption and political thuggery, appeared to be facing a growing threat
from armed opponents.
     In addition to the uprising in Saint Marc, police headquarters were
attacked in the cities of Trou de Nord, Lestere and Grand Goave,
independent Radio Metropole said.
     The revolt has come on top of months of sometimes violent
anti-Aristide demonstrations in Port-au-Prince and other cities in Haiti, a
country of 8 million people that is the poorest in the Americas and has a
long history of political instability.
     A column of up to 150 police special forces poured into Gonaives on
Saturday to try to retake the city, but they were ambushed by armed members
of a several hundred-strong band formed from a once pro-Aristide gang
called the Cannibal Army.
     Radio reports quoted rebels as saying 14 policemen were killed. But a
police source said on Sunday that only two policemen died.
     At the entrances to Saint Marc, where the armed Assembly of Militants
of Saint Marc has been calling for Aristide's departure in recent months,
youths manned barricades made from car parts, chopped down trees and
boulders.
    "This president is bad. First it was Gonaives, and now it's Saint
Marc," said one youth aged about 15 who did not give his name.
     The police station had been burned and trashed, official documents lay
in the dust, windows were shattered and doors carted away. The city's court
house had also been burned.
     Looters worked through containers at the city's small port, taking
bags of corn, and radios and televisions.
     At the main entrance to the city in the direction of Gonaives, about
40 miles (65 km) further north, the rebels had commandeered a truck loaded
with plantains and used it to block the road.
     Aristide has said he intends to serve out his second term to 2006. He
still commands support in many areas, although opponents have accused him
of relying on hired thugs.
     On Saturday night in Port-au-Prince, government supporters set up
barricades with burning tires throughout the city, prompting organizers of
an anti-government march set for Sunday to postpone it until Thursday.

  (Additional reporting by Amy Bracken in Port-au-Prince)