29982: (news) Chamberlain: Haiti-Slum Raid (later story) (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By TRENT JACOBS

   PORT-AU-PRINCE, Feb 9 (AP) -- Hundreds of U.N. peacekeepers raided
Haiti's largest slum Friday to arrest gang members and seize a section of
it -- sparking a gunbattle that wounded at least two soldiers, the top U.N.
commander said. Witnesses said at least one man died.
   More than 500 blue-helmeted troops in armored vehicles entered the
seaside slum of Cite Soleil before dawn and tried to seize several
abandoned buildings that had been used by gangs to stage attacks, said Maj.
Gen. Carlos Alberto Dos Santos Cruz, the Brazilian commander of the
9,000-strong international force.
   Dos Santos, speaking from Cite Soleil even as gunfire continued to echo
through the streets, said gang members fired thousands of rounds at
peacekeepers, wounding two. Peacekeepers, including a sniper stationed on a
watertower, returned fire.
   Dos Santos said he had no immediate information about casualties among
gang members or civilians in the densely populated slum of 300,000.
   "We had a raid to try to arrest the criminals and recover their weapons
they have inside this place," Dos Santos told reporters.
   AP journalists saw the blood-spattered body of a young man in a street.
Witnesses said he was walking through the area when he was shot. Residents
moved the body inside a building.
   Later, Associated Press journalists saw people from the slum use a
wheelbarrow to carry out a motionless woman bleeding from her chest. Slum
residents said she was struck by a stray bullet at home.
   Afterward, about 100 people from Cite Soleil protested outside the U.N.
military base in the slum, waving a white sheet and chanting "We want
peace!"
   "We want this fighting to stop so innocent people of Cite Soleil can
stop being victims and live as human beings," Damas Augustin, one of the
protesters, said as peacekeepers put up barriers to keep them at bay.
   Friday's raid was one of the biggest in months by peacekeepers, who were
sent to the troubled Caribbean country more than two years ago to quell
violence in the chaotic of a 2004 revolt that toppled former president
Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
   On Dec. 22, U.N. troops raided another part of Cite Soleil to break up a
kidnapping gang. The U.N. said six suspected gang members were killed,
although slum dwellers said 10 people died and that all were civilians.
   Dos Santos said most of the fighting happened in the Boston section of
Cite Soleil, which is controlled by a notorious street gang led by a
shadowy figure known only as "Evens." He said peacekeepers had made no
arrests nor recovered any weapons.
   Meanwhile, an American missionary kidnapped outside the Haitian capital
was released Friday, U.N. police and friends said, although there were
conflicting reports about whether Nathan Jean-Dieudonne was harmed during
the ordeal.
   Jean-Dieudonne, 58, a U.S. citizen of Haitian descent, was abducted
Sunday while driving home from his church in suburban Croix-des-Bouquets.
It was not immediately clear if a ransom was paid.
   ------
   Associated Press Writer Stevenson Jacobs contributed to this story.