27295: (news) Chamberlain: Haiti-Violence (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By MICHAEL NORTON

   PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jan 19 (AP) -- Four people were shot to death Wednesday
and Thursday in the latest surge of violence in Haiti's largest slum.
   The three men and a woman were killed Wednesday night and early Thursday
in the Port-au-Prince slum of Cite Soleil, authorities at Cite Soleil's St.
Catherine Hospital said. Seven others were injured.
   Residents blamed the killings on Jordanian peacekeepers who they said
sprayed the area's cinderblock homes with high-powered weapons. U.N.
spokesman Damian Onses-Cardona said he had no report on any troop
offensives in Cite Soleil since Tuesday and said peacekeepers don't open
fire unless attacked.
   Residents said one victim was a man in his 30s who ran a business
carrying goods with a wheelbarrow. His body lay on a walkway Thursday as
onlookers showed journalists high-caliber weapon rounds they said were
fired by U.N. troops.
   The 9,000-strong U.N. force is struggling to restore order ahead of the
country's repeatedly postponed elections, now set for Feb. 7, and has
clashed often with well-armed street gangs blamed for kidnappings and
killings.
   Two Jordanians were gunned down at a Cite Soleil checkpoint on Tuesday.
   Meanwhile, the humanitarian group Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors
Without Borders, said Haiti's violence was increasingly targeting women,
children and the elderly. It said it had treated 2,500 people for gunshot
or stab wounds at a single trauma center in the last year.
   More than 1,500 people -- including 78 police officers and nine U.N.
peacekeepers -- have died since former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide
fled Haiti in February 2004, local human rights activist Pierre Esperance
said.
   Elections have been postponed several times because of organizational
problems and violence.