Clashes Roil Pro-Aristide Haitian Slum
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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Gunfire erupted in a slum teeming with loyalists of ousted President Aristide yesterday, sending people scattering through trash-strewn streets following days of political clashes that have left at least 14 dead.
Residents said men fired into the air, stole food from market vendors, and burned tires in the streets in the slum of La Saline.
The unrest came a day after police arrested Haiti’s Senate president and two other pro-Aristide politicians following a six-hour standoff in a radio station. The justice minister, Bernard Gousse told reporters the three were suspected of being “intellectual authors” of the violence that erupted Thursday during demonstrations demanding Mr. Aristide’s return.
The politicians, who insisted they were innocent, were led out in handcuffs from the offices of Radio Caraibes Saturday night after a judge entered to negotiate their surrender.
Mr. Gousse said police found in one of their cars an Uzi submachine gun and a T65 assault rifle, which are illegal in Haiti. Pro-Aristide groups criticized the arrests, saying police didn’t have a warrant and had planted the weapons.
Heavy gunfire rang out Saturday night and yesterday in parts of Port-au- Prince. No one was reported killed, but streets remained blocked with overturned wooden market stalls in some areas. Tensions have erupted as the impoverished country struggles to recover from floods unleashed two weeks ago by Tropical Storm Jeanne, which killed more than 1,550 and left some 900 missing, most presumed dead.
In the hard-hit northwestern city of Gonaives on yesterday, residents brought in two emaciated men found semiconscious on the ground to a clinic run by Argentine troops. Doctors said it appeared the two hadn’t eaten in several days and had psychological trauma – one because he lost relatives in the floods. The other, 40-year-old Jacques Agelus Faustin, was found collapsed under a mango tree.
“We all thought he was dead,” said the friend who found him, Soupon Jean-Paul.
The American Health and Human Services secretary, Tommy Thompson, also visited Gonaives yesterday, meeting officials and stopping at the clinic, where U.N. peacekeepers have treated hundreds of the wounded.
“There’s no question we have to figure out how to rebuild Gonaives,” Mr. Thompson said, adding that would involve creating jobs through public works projects.