Haiti: Government militia execute 10 students

Lawyer Judy Delacruz said she saw trails of blood where neighbors told her police had dragged the bodies of those killed along an alley behind Ruelle Estime in the Fort National neighborhood of Port-au-Prince.

The report comes in the week Haiti’s interim government said police would act to end weeks of violence that has killed at least 61 people – not including those reportedly killed on Tuesday.

It started on September 30, when police reportedly fired on protesters demanding Aristide’s return from exile in South Africa, killing two. The beheaded bodies of three police officers were found the following day.

A US-backed interim government installed amid turmoil in March had to confront the unrest as it tried to respond to the needs of some 200,000 homeless survivors of Tropical Storm Jeanne in Gonaives, Haiti’s third city, as gangsters and ordinary people looted food sent in a huge international response to the catastrophe.

An undermanned UN peacekeeping mission sent to stabilise Haiti after Aristide fled has been struggling to contain the situation.

At a security meeting yesterday, aid workers said they were considering stopping the distribution of aid since thieves were attacking the people they helped.

“If you create more harm than help, then it gets counterproductive,” said Luc Simonin of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

He spoke after French Red Cross representative Audrey Delaitre described how looters had taken all the stoves and cooking utensils distributed to 62 families that had lost everything in Jeanne’s floods and mudslides.

She said the thieves also took the few belongings people had managed to retrieve after the storm.

UN peacekeepers sent to stabilize Haiti after Aristide fled, and now having to divert their mission following the storm, said they had detained 20 looters in a big operation on Tuesday, including three or four dangerous gangsters.

Meanwhile, an agreement reached after the storm between the street gangs for which Gonaives is notorious was broken Tuesday night, threatening more violence.

“Last night, the truce between gang leaders in Gonaives ended. Maybe there will be more shootings at night,” the UN officer responsible for security in Gonaives, Gill Bonillo, warned aid workers.

In a bizarre aside, aid workers were told the mayor of nearby Anse Rouge was threatening to block the road from Gonaives. He was upset because the international humanitarian group CARE, which has been distributing all food aid, allowed only two of his 14 armed guards to enter its compound.