Apparent Coup Attempt Foiled In Haiti

A gang of gunmen seized Haiti's National Palace in a coup attempt Monday, killing four people before police retook the building. Three others, including one of the attackers, died as violence spread.

Government supporters armed with machetes and sticks struck back by burning the homes and offices of opposition leaders around the country.

President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his wife were unharmed in their home in Tabarre, about three miles from the palace, said National Palace spokesman Jacques Maurice. Aristide rarely stays at the palace, which serves as the presidential office and official residence.

The president went to the palace hours after the assault and in a speech broadcast to the nation asked Haitians to be vigilant in the face of the attempted coup.

"It is time to be patriots; the nation is in danger," Aristide said. "I thank the population and the police for defending democracy."

Monday's violence prompted the U.S. Embassy to close its doors and urge Americans in Haiti to stay at home. Airlines canceled flights to the impoverished Caribbean nation.

Since Aristide's Lavalas Family party swept disputed parliamentary and local elections in May 2000, Haiti has been mired in unrest but Monday's attack was by far the most violent.

Maurice said 33 gunmen first tried to attack the national penitentiary, but were rebuffed.

They then moved on to the palace, lobbing a grenade at the building at about 2 a.m. and opening fire as they entered. Two police officers were killed and six others were injured, Maurice said.

By midmorning, police had regained control of the palace, shooting and killing one gunman, said National Palace security head Jean Oriel.

Police later arrested one of the alleged attackers, wounded and heavily armed, in a pickup truck on a road to the border with the neighboring Dominican Republic, police spokesman Jean-Dady Simeon said.

The rest escaped, some in a pickup truck that sped out of the palace, national radio reported. The gunmen shot and killed two passers-by as they fled, witnesses said.

Aristide was first elected president in 1990 and stayed in power only eight months before the army ousted him in a coup that began Sept. 30, 1991. He was restored to power in 1994 by U.S. troops, but a term limit forced him to step down in 1996 and he was replaced by his protege, Rene Preval. Aristide began his second term in February.

The identity of the attackers wasn't immediately clear. Oriel said they dressed in the khaki uniform of Haiti's former army, which Aristide disbanded after he returned to power in 1994.

Former soldiers have held several demonstrations against Aristide this year, calling for the re-establishment of the 7,500-strong army.

A government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the attackers identified their leader as the former police chief of northern Cap-Haitien city, Guy Philippe, who fled to the neighboring Dominican Republic last year with seven polce officers accused of plotting a coup.

But Philippe called The Associated Press from the Dominican Republic to deny involvement in the attack, saying "it was a staged event to give a pretext for attacking the opposition."

After the attack, hundreds of Aristide supporters, wielding machetes, surrounded the palace. Some shouted, "We'll never accept another coup d'etat."

In apparent retribution for the palace attack, Aristide's supporters in the capital burned the headquarters of the Convergence opposition alliance, three buildings belonging to the opposition as well as the homes of two opposition leaders. Just outside Port-au-Prince, rioters burned the home of an opposition member and ransacked the French Institute, a cultural center run by the French government.

A mob killed two men and burned their bodies in northern Gonaives, where the home of opposition leader Luc Mesadieu was set aflame, independent radio Haiti Inter reported. And in the western town of Petit-Goave, separate mobs of government and opposition supporters set fire to 16 homes, Signal FM radio reported.

"I don't know what happened at the National Palace, but it has become a pretext to massacre the opposition," said opposition leader Gerard Gourgue, who said he had gone into hiding and feared for his life.

Culture and Communication Minister Guy Paul said the mob violence was regrettable, but "the people are enraged and things like that are difficult to avoid."

Haiti's problems have been mounting since the 2000 elections. The opposition called the balloting fraudulent and foreign donors refused to release hundreds of millions of dollars in aid until results are revised.

There has also been mounting grass-roots opposition to Aristide within his party. Protesters have accused Aristide of failing to deliver on promises of basic services, such as sanitation and electricity.

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