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Neighbours Say Haitian Cops Killed at least 10 People in Capital
Associated Press

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) - Haitian police raided a building in Haiti's capital and killed at least 10 people, most of them young, neighbours told a human rights lawyer Wednesday, the second day of a strike called by loyalists who want the return of ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Police denied the report. Lawyer Judy Delacruz said she saw trails of blood where neighbours told her police had dragged the bodies of those killed in an alley behind Ruelle Estime in the Fort National neighbourhood of Port-au-Prince.

The report came the week Haiti's interim government said police would act to end weeks of violence that killed at least 61 people - not including those reported killed Tuesday.The violence started Sept. 30, when police were reported to have fired on protesters demanding Aristide's return from exile in South Africa, killing two. The beheaded bodies of three police officers were found the following day.

"They said police killed 10 people and some say 13, including a young school girl of 13 years old," Delacruz said.

She said residents told her police drove into the neighbourhood around 4:30 p.m. local time Tuesday in five vehicles and drove down an alley behind a building, in which they shot and killed the people, mostly students. In poverty-stricken Haiti, people in their mid-20s often are students trying to complete high school.

Neighbours said the bodies were taken away in an ambulance. A reporter visited the main morgue but found no bodies. Delacruz said she also had gone and found no bodies.

The police director in charge of western Haiti, Renan Etienne, said the police had not carried out any operation Tuesday.

Police spokeswoman Gesse Coicou said the only death reported on police records was of an officer shot and killed Tuesday in a different part of Port-au-Prince. She said police had conducted searches in that area but "we have no reports of any death yesterday as a result of police action."

Delacruz said the people she spoke with complained they felt "targeted because they live in a poor neighbourhood and they said anyone who does is associated with Aristide."

A U.S.-backed interim government installed amid turmoil in March had to confront unrest as it tried to respond to the needs of some 200,000 homeless survivors of tropical storm Jeanne in Gonaives, Haiti's third city, as gangsters and ordinary people looted food sent in a huge international response to the catastrophe. An undermanned UN peacekeeping mission sent to stabilize Haiti after Aristide fled has been struggling to contain the situation.

At a security meeting Wednesday, aid workers said they were considering stopping the distribution of aid, since thieves were attacking the people they helped.

"If you create more harm than help, then it gets counter-productive," said Luc Simonin of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

He spoke after French Red Cross representative Audrey Delaitre described how looters had taken all the stoves and cooking utensils distributed to 62 families that had lost everything in Jeanne's floods and mudslides. She said the thieves also took the few belongings people had managed to retrieve after the storm.

UN troops sent to stabilize Haiti after Aristide fled and now having to divert their mission following the storm said they had detained 20 looters in a big operation on Tuesday, including three or four dangerous gangsters.

"Some escaped, but we will try to catch them," Vice-Commodore Gustavo Rodolfo of Argentina, which commands UN forces in Gonaives, told the meeting as two patrolling helicopters roared overhead.

"But we think the situation will go better now," he said.

Meanwhile, an agreement reached after the storm between the street gangs for which Gonaives is notorious was broken Tuesday night, threatening more violence.

"Last night, the truce between gang leaders in Gonaives ended. Maybe there will be more shootings at night," the UN officer responsible for security in Gonaives, Gill Bonillo, warned aid workers.

In a bizarre aside, aid workers were told the mayor of nearby Anse Rouge was threatening to block the road from Gonaives. He was upset because the international humanitarian group CARE, which has been distributing all food aid, allowed only two of his 14 armed guards to enter its compound.

Wednesday was the second day of a three-day strike called by Aristide loyalists. But children went to school, businesses opened and some vendors were on the street. There were isolated reports of gunshots.

"I have to feed my children," said one vendor, who added she had been threatened by Aristide supporters because she was working. She refused to give her name or political allegiance.

A similar strike call Sept. 30 paralysed Port-au-Prince for nearly two weeks, after businesses were looted and cars torched. A tense calm returned to the city this week, when businesses and schools reopened.

Aristide fled the Caribbean country Feb. 29 after a three-week rebellion begun by a street gang that was joined by ex-soldiers from the Haitian army he disbanded in 1995.