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UN kills again in Haiti

Written by Administrator on . Posted in Politics.

 

Protest and UN killing at Lascahobas

 

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Gunshots were fired during a confrontation between U.N. troops and demonstrators on Haiti's central plateau that injured at least three people, peacekeepers said Thursday.

Authorities said they could not confirm radio reports that two people died in the violence, which occurred Wednesday during a protest against a two-month electricity outage in Lascahobas, a remote town 14 miles (23 kilometers) from the Dominican Republic border.

 

It was another in a recent string of confrontations between protesters and the 9,000-strong U.N. military force that has been in Haiti since the 2004 rebellion that ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

A U.N. peacekeeping spokeswoman said demonstrators fired weapons and threw rocks at Nepalese peacekeepers as the troops removed barricades set up by the protesters. The soldiers then fired warning shots, she said.

"The people were firing in the middle of the crowd. (The soldiers) only fired in the air to disperse the crowd," Sophie Boutaud de la Combe told The Associated Press.

On Thursday, Port-au-Prince-based Radio Metropole said two people were killed during the clash.

Haitian police spokesman Frantz Lerebours could not confirm any deaths. Nor could U.N. peacekeepers, who said the incident was under investigation.

In June, a demonstrator was killed as protesters threw rocks and U.N. peacekeepers fired live ammunition and rubber bullets into the air during a funeral procession for a popular priest allied with Aristide.

Peacekeepers initially said the young man was hit by a rock, but an autopsy revealed he was killed by a gunshot in the face. The U.N. says the bullet was 9-mm and thus not fired by the Brazilian peacekeepers' 7.62-caliber rifles. The autopsy and ballistics reports have not been made public.