Demanding the return of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, young men with machetes, guns and rocks set alight tires and debris in the street and threatened to behead foreigners after UN troops and police arrested dozens in a sweep through a volatile slum.
Peacekeepers in armored personnel carriers moved into the Bel Air slum Wednesday while gunfire crackled and two helicopters roared overhead, trying to put down a campaign by Aristide loyalists who have carried out gory beheadings in imitation of Iraqi insurgents. The headless body of a man lay in the street in La Salines, another slum, on Wednesday morning. Three police officers also were decapitated last week when Aristide supporters stepped up protests demanding his return from exile in South Africa and launched "Operation Baghdad."
At least 19 people have been killed in a week of violence in Port-au-Prince, which relief workers said could paralyze attempts to feed tens of thousands of hungry survivors in the northwest port city of Gonaives, which was devastated by floods from Tropical Storm Jeanne last month. At least 50 people have been treated for gunshot wounds since last Friday at Port-au-Prince General Hospital, records show. Officials said the hospital usually treats one or two wounded people a day.
One angry man in Bel Air on Wednesday thrust a gun into the face of an Associated Press reporter, yelled expletives against US President George W. Bush and UN peacekeepers, then screamed "We are going to kidnap some Americans and cut off their heads."
Protesters also have been demanding an end to "the invasion" -- referring to US Marines who flew in the day Aristide left in February and UN peacekeepers who replaced them in June. Aristide loyalists blocked streets throughout Bel Air on Wednesday with torched cars and other debris, just blocks from the National Palace.
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