HAITI: President Jean-Bertrand Aristide yesterday called for international help to stave off civil war in Haiti after rebels, aided by senior members of the former military dictatorship, captured several more key towns.
Witnesses said around 50 rebels descended on the police station in Hinche, about 110km north-east of Port-au-Prince, and killed three officers before the police fled the city of 50,000.
"Blood has flowed in Hinche," Mr Aristide told reporters at a news conference on Monday, saying he had asked for technical assistance from the Organisation of American States (OAS). "It may be that the police cannot cope with this kind of attack." Yesterday France, a former ruler of the island, said it would be prepared to send humanitarian aid but stopped short of suggesting direct military involvement.
The political situation has seriously deteriorated in Haiti over the last two weeks as opposition to Mr Aristide has erupted into armed conflict between pro- and anti-Aristide gangs throughout the country, leaving around 60 dead and raising fears of a humanitarian crisis.
More than a dozen towns are now in the hands of rebels who have cut off much of the north and now control most roads leading in and out of the Artibonite, Haiti's breadbasket and home to almost a million people.
UN officials have brokered an agreement allowing aid supplies to be trucked along "humanitarian corridors" from the capital, Port-au-Prince, via the most populous rebel-held town, Gonaives, to other conflict-hit towns in the north.
The UN refugee agency yesterday urged Haiti's neighbours to take in refugees fleeing their homeland while neighbouring Domincan Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola, has called for international intervention.
Mr Aristide refused to discuss strategies for halting the revolt or say whether he was asking for military assistance.
"A group of terrorists are breaking democratic order," Mr Aristide said. "We have the responsibility to use the law and dialogue to take a peaceful way" to quell the uprising that has blocked food, fuel and medical shipments to northern Haiti.
But efforts at mediation both by Caricom, the Caribbean community, and the OAS have failed to find sufficient common ground for a compromise, leaving the nation to descend into gang warfare, with both sides relying on armed youths to enforce control.
Over the weekend witnesses have seen prominent figures from the previous dictatorship return to the country from the Dominican Republic to join the uprising. The rebels, many of whom are former Aristide supporters, boasted of their new allies.
"They have joined us. We have created a national resistance," said Wynter Etienne, whose gang overran Gonaives two weeks ago. "We're going to take a major part of Haiti." One of Mr Etienne's new allies is Louis-Jodel Chamblain, a former soldier who led the feared paramilitary group FRAPH - the Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti. FRAPH killed and maimed hundreds of Aristide supporters under military dictatorship between 1991 and 1994.
Another is Guy Philippe, the former police chief of Cap-Haitien who fled to the Dominican Republic after being accused of fomenting a coup in 2002.
Mr Etienne said Mr Philippe would attack Cap-Haitien, Haiti's second city, where Aristide supporters have built barricades and torched the homes of opponents.
French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said yesterday that France was ready to offer humanitarian assistance to Haiti, a former French colony.
But he was non-committal about whether France would send a peacekeeping force to the impoverished Caribbean nation, saying Paris was in contact with its partners in the framework of the United Nations, which has set up a humanitarian mission.
"We have the means - and many friendly countries are mobilised and ready to act. We have to find a way to do this in liaison with the different Haitian parties," Mr Villepin said.
The US has all but ruled out sending its forces to Haiti.