U.N.
troops and ex-soldiers from Haiti's disbanded army fought two
gunbattles on Sunday, leaving two peacekeepers and at least two former
soldiers dead in the deadliest day for the 10-month-old U.N. mission,
officials said. The Sri Lankan and Nepalese soldiers who died were the
first peacekeepers killed in clashes since the U.N. force arrived in
June 2004 to try and stabilize the impoverished, volatile nation,
officials said. The Sri Lankan was killed and three other peacekeepers
wounded in a raid on a police station occupied by armed ex-soldiers in
Petit-Goave, about 45 miles west of Port-au-Prince, U.N. spokesman
Toussaint Kongo-Doudou said. Two ex-soldiers died and 10 others were
wounded. The U.N. troops entered Petit-Goave before dawn. Using a
loudspeaker, the Brazilian commander of U.N. troops in Haiti, Lt. Gen.
Augusto Heleno Ribeiro, tried for 20 minutes to get the former soldiers
to surrender peacefully when they opened fire on U.N. troops,
Kongo-Doudou said. "We wanted to resolve this peacefully, but our
troops received a hostile response from the insurgents and so they
responded with force," he said. [more]
Article originally appeared on (http://brownwatch.com/).
See website for complete article licensing information.