Reprinted from Caribbean Net News
caribbeannetnews.com

UN forces in Haiti battle gangs in slum; five people shot
12-30-2006

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AFP): UN troops and Haitian police battled gangs Thursday as they tried to purge a kidnapping gang from a shantytown in the capital, leaving five people injured by gunfire, the United Nations said.

Witnesses in Cite Soleil, the largest shantytown in Haiti and partly controlled by armed gangs, said that five people were killed during the UN operation.

According to a UN statement, the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) and the Haitian national police destroyed part of the turf of the Belony gang in the Bois Neuf quarter.

A gun battle erupted during the operation that was aimed at curbing gang activity in the capital, the statement said.

Last Friday, MINUSTAH and the police had conducted an operation in the same neighborhood that left more than a dozen killed and nearly 30 injured.

MINUSTAH announced that it would continue to support police operations in a crackdown on crime and lawlessness in Port-au-Prince.

Meanwhile Thursday, hundreds of supporters of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide demonstrated peacefully in the capital to protest the UN operations and call for the return of Aristide from exile in South Africa.