18369: Nine die in Haiti street battles as rebels seize town (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: radtimes <resist@best.com>

Nine die in Haiti street battles as rebels seize town

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=489238

By Michael Norton in Gonaives, AP Writer
09 February 2004

Hundreds of people looted shipping containers in the Haitian town of St
Marc yesterday, a day after armed opponents of the government drove police
out in a widening uprising against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Police also withdrew from the larger city of Gonaives,north of St Marc,
after failing to defeat rebels in street battles that killed at least nine
people on Saturday, witnesses said. Opponents of Mr Aristide said they set
up barricades yesterday to block the main north-south highway in Cabaret,
south-east of St Marc and about 13 miles north-west of Port-au-Prince, the
capital.

At least two people in St Marc were killed on Saturday when gunmen seized
the police station and set it and the courthouse next door on fire,
residents said. One wounded man told journalists yesterday he was shot in
the chest by a police officer wearing civilian clothes.

Residents blocked streets in St Marc with felled trees, barbed wire,
boulders, flaming tyres and car chassis. Axel Philippe, 34, one of the
dozens of people massed on the highway to the town, said: "After Aristide
leaves, the country will return to normal."

Hundreds of people carried away spoils, including mattresses, television
sets, sacks of flour and iron beams from shipping containers that they
pried open at the town's port.

Members of an opposition group known as Ramicos said they seized control of
St Marc with the help of other opponents of Mr Aristide.

Witnesses said police pulled out of Gonaives late on Saturday after a day
of gun battles with rebels of the Gonaives Resistance Front, who had taken
control on Thursday. The government has vowed to regain control after the
attacks.

Those killed on Saturday in Gonaives included at least seven police and two
militants. Crowds mutilated the corpses of some police officers; one body
was dragged through the street as a man swung at it with a machete, and a
woman cut off the officer's ear. Another policeman was lynched and stripped
to his shorts before residents dropped a large rock on his corpse.

Four other police were killed after their vehicle overturned, one militant
said. He said police killed two militants who were building barricades.

Militants have attacked police stations in at least five small towns near
Gonaives since Friday, Haitian radio reports said.

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