Food and medical crisis looms in rebel-held Haitian city
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Else Mates, who is pregnant, sleeps as she waits for medical attention at the General Hospital of Gonaives.
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GONAIVES, Haiti (AP) -- A food and medical crisis threatened this rebel-held city Friday as gunmen sped through streets in looted trucks, reinforcing barricades against a feared police offensive to halt an uprising that has killed at least 49 people.
Roadblocks have halted most food shipments since the rebellion started last week.
"The problem is very grave," said Raoul Elysee of the Haitian Red Cross, meeting with rebels and aid officials to discuss ways to deliver food, medicine and fuel. He said emergency supplies of flour, cooking oil, and other basics would run out in four days.
At the hospital in Gonaives, the fourth-largest city where the rebellion erupted Feb. 5, more than a dozen people waited to see doctors who never showed up. The Red Cross warned the unrest was jeopardizing urgent health care needs.
Relatives took patients from the hospital after the fighting broke out, carrying them on their backs or on motorcycles, said Cerrament Herat, 68, a hospital janitor.
Only one badly malnourished man remained in the hospital Friday, lying unattended in a bed.
"I came here to find some help for my son and there is no one to help us," said Yolande Saintil, holding her 8-year-old son. She said he had a fever and stomach ache. "I've been coming since Monday. There are no doctors."
Pierre Joseph, another janitor, said doctors were afraid to return following a gunbattle at the hospital a week ago, when police stormed in carrying a wounded officer. With rebels in pursuit and officers in a panic, the police opened fire inside the hospital walls, killing at least three civilian bystanders who were trying to hide, he said.
Rebels dragged a wounded officer from the hospital and stoned him to death, smashing in his head, according to an AP photographer. Police had tried to retake the city from the rebels, but failed.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, which works in areas of conflict, warned many people in need of medical care were not getting it, and urged combatants to respect international rules of combat.
"Persons not directly participating in the clashes, including those who surrender or who are no longer capable of fighting because they are wounded, sick or captured ... may not be attacked and must be treated humanely," the Geneva-based committee said.
Schools and many shops remained closed in Gonaives. A single bank reopened Friday, while dozens stood outside another desperate for cash transfers from relatives overseas that are some families' sole source of income.
Gas prices have more than doubled, with fuel mainly reaching the city in small bottles brought by motorcycle couriers.
More than half the population has fled Gonaives to escape escalating violence in recent months, leaving about 100,000 people, Elysee said.
In the western city of St. Marc, where police have driven out rebels, anti-Aristide militants burned down a clinic on Wednesday because officials refused to hand over two wounded anti-government militants.
U.N. representative Adama Guindo appealed to police and rebels to open a "humanitarian corridor" to northern Haiti, which has been inaccessible because of barricades, some manned by drunken and aggressive thugs.
The U.N. World Food Program has been unable to deliver food to some 268,000 people dependent on food aid in northern Haiti. The agency is negotiating to get 1,000 pounds (450 kilograms) of rice delivered next week to the port of Cap-Haitien, Haiti's second-largest city of more than half a million people that has been barricaded by Aristide militants protecting against any rebel incursion. A barge of gasoline was on the way to the city, which has been without gas and power for nearly a week.
The rebels say they will only lay down their weapons if they oust President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, but they are short on answers for dealing with immediate human needs and Haiti's deepening poverty.
Rebels on Friday discussed how to better defend the city against a police attack. Some set up a heavy machine gun at the edge of town while others added discarded refrigerators and other junk to barricades fortifying the city.
Buteur Metayer, center, leader of an anti-Aristide group, leads a march Thursday in Gonaives, Haiti.
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There appear to be about 100 rebels in Gonaives and the police force for Haiti's 8 million people numbers only 5,000 who are often outnumbered and outgunned.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell was meeting in Washington on Friday with leaders from the Caribbean, Canada and the Organization of American States. Like most leaders, Powell has said the solution to Haiti's problems should not come through violence or a regime change.
Opposition politicians refuse to participate in elections to rectify flawed 2000 balloting, swept by Aristide's party, unless Haiti's leader steps down. He refuses.
Many who once backed Aristide have turned on him as poverty worsens while the president's clique enjoys lavish lifestyles some charge are funded by corruption.
An opposition coalition plans a mass demonstration Sunday calling for Aristide's resignation in the capital, Port-au-Prince. Attempts to hold one on Thursday were crushed by Aristide militants who stoned protesters and blocked the protest route with flaming barricades. The government says between 7 and a dozen attackers have been arrested, but a foreign technical adviser to the police said there have been none.
Copyright 2004 The
Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
