Violence in Haiti's capital has claimed at least 46 lives, with hospital records showing Tuesday that 17 victims were shot and killed this week. Many shops and markets remained closed Tuesday with people fearful to venture out on the streets.
Port-au-Prince has been beset by gunbattles and beheadings since a Sept. 30 demonstration marking the 1991 coup that first overthrew President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. In February, the former priest fled the country again after a three-week revolt led by a street gang and former soldiers.
Tensions still are simmering with Aristide supporters demanding his return and an end to the "invasion" by foreign troops. US Marines arrived in Haiti the day Aristide left and were replaced by UN peacekeepers sent in June to stabilize the country.
Aristide's supporters
Rebels who want the interim government to formally reinstate the army that Aristide disbanded have accused the peacekeepers of doing little to halt the violence and say that they are ready to end it.
On Monday, as mourners gathered for the funeral of five assassinated police officers, gunfire crackled around the capital and businesses shut their doors again.
Records at Port-au-Prince hospital seen by The Associated Press showed 17 people with gunshot wounds died Monday, eight of them in the Cite Soleil seaside slum that is filled with Aristide supporters and street gangs, and three in Martissant, a western neighborhood that has been a flashpoint in the recent unrest. That raised the toll to at least 46 killed since Sept. 30.
One man was reportedly shot and killed near the presidential palace.
"There was shooting everywhere," said Lovely Pierre-Louis, 19. "I saw a man walking across that street with a boy, then the shooting came again, and he was on the ground with his head bleeding, and the boy was running."
Messile Sylviani, a 30-year-old beautician, said her salon closed an hour after opening Monday, and she returned home, a block from where the man had been shot.
"Now I'm so scared," she said. "We're all stressed out because we know shooting could start again any time."
On Sept. 30, police reportedly shot and killed two people at the demonstration. The headless bodies of three police officers turned up the same day, and government officials blamed Aristide militants and a new campaign called "Operation Baghdad."
US response
The US on Tuesday accused Aristide supports of "a systematic campaign to destabilize the interim government and disrupt the efforts of the international community."
"Over the past two weeks, pro-Aristide thugs have murdered policemen, looted businesses and public installations, and terrorized civilians," said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.
His statement urged leaders of Aristide's Lavalas Family to "break with the party's legacy of violence and criminality." It said the interim government represented the best hope for Haiti and expressed confidence that UN peacekeepers' capacity to protect Haitians would increase within days and weeks.
Aristide supporters say the police started the violence, which has plagued businesses and complicated efforts to help flood survivors in the northwestern city of Gonaives.
Tropical Storm Jeanne left 200,000 homeless people there who are living on rooftops and in the street.
Limited food supply
CARE, an international humanitarian organization, suspended emergency food distributions for two days in Gonaives, which is supplied by ship and by road from Port-au-Prince.
"We have enough food in Gonaives to meet needs for only four or five days," said Abby Maxman, Haiti's CARE director. "We're already cutting back deliveries to conserve the supply, and we might have to consider suspending them if the security situation doesn't improve."
Unrest in the capital also blocked access to the seaport for several days last week, cutting off the major route for UN World Food Program shipments.
UN forces are providing 24-hour security at CARE's warehouse in Gonaives, where street gangs and ordinary civilians have looted aid shipments, as well as escorting large convoys of WFP and CARE trucks, Maxman said. But he said the UN has reduced troop levels there to address rising violence in the capital.
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
A judge in Bangladesh issued an arrest warrant for the British member of parliament and former British economic secretary to the treasury Tulip Siddiq, who is a niece of former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted in August last year in a mass uprising that ended her 15-year rule. The Bangladeshi Anti-Corruption Commission has been investigating allegations against Siddiq that she and her family members, including Hasina, illegally received land in a state-owned township project near Dhaka, the capital. Senior Special Judge of Dhaka Metropolitan Zakir Hossain passed the order on Sunday, after considering charges in three separate cases filed
APPORTIONING BLAME: The US president said that there were ‘millions of people dead because of three people’ — Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskiy US President Donald Trump on Monday resumed his attempts to blame Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for Russia’s invasion, falsely accusing him of responsibility for “millions” of deaths. Trump — who had a blazing public row in the Oval Office with Zelenskiy six weeks ago — said the Ukranian shared the blame with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered the February 2022 invasion, and then-US president Joe Biden. Trump told reporters that there were “millions of people dead because of three people.” “Let’s say Putin No. 1, but let’s say Biden, who had no idea what the hell he was doing, No. 2, and
RSS