Friday, June 9, 2006

by Joseph Guyler Delva

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Reuters): UN troops and gangs exchanged gunfire in Haiti's largest slum in the first such clash in months, and witnesses said on Thursday that three people were killed.

The shooting occurred late on Wednesday in Cite Soleil, the vast seaside slum on the northern edge of the capital that was the scene of routine gunfights between gangs and foreign troops last year, but had been relatively peaceful since before Haiti's Feb. 7 presidential election.

A spokesman for the UN mission in Haiti, Lt. Col. Elamarti Abdesslam, said peacekeepers returned fire after gunmen shot at them, but could not confirm if anyone was killed.

"All I can say is that no one on our side was hurt, but we don't know if anyone was killed among the gang members," Abdesslam said.

Witnesses and gang members said at least three people were killed but it was not clear if all of them were shot when UN troops returned fire.

"I saw one young man killed after the foreign soldiers shot in our direction," said Marjorie, a 24-year-old woman who did not want to give her last name. "But there were other people with weapons too."

Cite Soleil, a bastion of support for former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was rife with violence after he was pushed from power by a bloody rebellion in February 2004.

The peacekeepers, now numbering about 8,700 soldiers and police, were sent to the poor Caribbean nation after Aristide's ouster to support a U.S.-backed interim government.

The violence in Cite Soleil diminished when Rene Preval, a one-time Aristide protege who was the favorite of Aristide's slum supporters, emerged as the front-runner for the presidency. Preval won the February election and took office in May.

Preval's prime minister, Jacques Edouard Alexis, and his coalition cabinet, were approved by Parliament this week and were scheduled to be sworn into office on Friday.

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