23338: (Chamberlain) UN peacekeepers move into Bel Air (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By AMY BRACKEN

   PORT-AU-PRINCE, Oct 6 (AP) -- U.N. peacekeepers and Haitian police in
armored personnel carriers moved in on a downtown slum blocked by loyalists
of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, taking action Wednesday to halt
a new urban offensive.
   Three police officers were decapitated last week when Aristide
supporters launched the guerrilla campaign dubbed "Operation Baghdad,"
imitating gory beheadings by Iraqi insurgents.
   At least 18 people have been killed in the violence, which has kept
fearful residents of the capital at home and which relief workers said
could paralyze attempts to feed tens of thousands of hungry storm survivors
in the flood-ravaged port city of Gonaives.
   On Tuesday, a dozen young men and children in the slum of Bel Air
carried a man over their heads, threw him to the ground, shot him several
times and then tried to chop off his head with machetes, said Ninger
Napoleon, a reporter for Radio Antilles who watched the scene.
   He said the attackers, failing in the decapitation, abandoned the body
of the man, who had been accused of spying for the rebels who overthrew
Aristide in a February uprising.
   Interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue -- whom protesters have also
threatened to behead -- accused pro-Aristide street gangs of instigating
the violence. Aristide supporters say the police started it by firing into
crowds of unarmed protesters.
   "This threatens to paralyze all the humanitarian efforts we have in
Gonaives. It's extremely serious," Anne Poulsen of the U.N. World Food
Program said Tuesday. "No one can afford to leave people in Gonaives
without food even for a day or two."
   On Wednesday, U.N. troops and Haitian police surrounded the warren of
concrete slum homes overlooking the National Palace in Port-au-Prince,
searching cars and people at checkpoints near torched cars that residents
were using to keep them out.
   Justice Minister Bernard Gousse said on Radio Vision 2000 that it was
"an operation to counter Operation Baghdad."
   Firefights in Bel Air and elsewhere in the capital continued into the
night and protesters set up burning barricades on roads where they forced
people to hand over money.
   The violence has scared away workers from the port, where Poulsen said
135 containers with 2,430 tons of food were stuck. Haitian and U.N.
officials said Tuesday they would ensure workers open the port.
   But it was unclear whether that could be guaranteed by a government with
only 3,000 ill-equipped officers to police a country of 8 million, and the
Brazilian-led U.N. peacekeeping force with 3,000 troops -- well under the
8,000 promised. Some 750 peacekeepers are tied up in Gonaives.
   In that devastated northwestern port city Tuesday, children tossed bread
from the back of a truck to storm survivors who negotiated slippery,
mud-mired roads.
   Hundreds lined up at U.N. food centers, but thousands more who are too
weak or too sick can't get to the food. More than 100,000 remain hungry,
the International Federation of Red Crescent and Red Cross Societies said.
   As rescuers recovered more bodies, the official toll rose Monday to
1,870 with another 884 people reported missing and most presumed dead.
   Some food is looted before it gets to distribution points, and street
gangs rob some people of their rations.
   Young men armed with rocks and metal bars blocked the road from the
biggest food warehouse on Tuesday and jumped on four departing trucks. The
attackers let the trucks go after discovering they were empty.
   Saint Amise Dorcelue said she has tried four times to get food for
herself and her five boys. Six months pregnant, Dorcelue was left penniless
after her husband died on his fishing boat during the storm.
   "On Monday, I went out (to a distribution point) for the fourth time,
and I couldn't get anything," said the barefoot 30-year-old. "There are too
many people there and they are always pushing and fighting.
   "I'm hungry, too, but I can't fight or my baby might get hurt," she
added, patting her stomach.
   Dorcelue and two of her sons sat on the dock in Gonaives, trying to fish
with some old fishing line wrapped around a used shampoo bottle. If she
catches enough tiny shad, she can sell them in the market to buy rice and
corn.
   "Sometimes we have food, sometimes we don't," she shrugged, resigned to
the misery that is commonplace in Haiti, where political turmoil and greed
turns natural disasters into catastrophes.
   Tropical Storm Jeanne, whose system was laden with rain, pounded
Gonaives for 30 hours beginning Sept. 17. More than 98 percent of Haiti is
deforested -- because people chop trees for fuel -- leaving no soil to hold
the rain. It burst river banks and overflowed entire valleys.
   Gonaives had never recovered from a February rebellion that began when a
street gang torched government buildings, released jailed criminals and
forced police to flee. Dozens of people were killed here before Aristide
fled the country Feb. 29.
   Latortue's interim government has proved ineffectual in Haiti's latest
crises in Gonaives and Port-au-Prince.
   Deadly clashes continued Tuesday between street gangs in Cite Soleil, a
shantytown teeming with Aristide supporters, and between police and the
gangs, residents said.
   On Tuesday, at least eight people were treated for gunshot wounds at
Port-au-Prince General Hospital.
   ------
   Associated Press writers Stevenson Jacobs in Gonaives, Haiti, and
Michael Norton in San Juan, Puerto Rico, contributed to this report.