As rebels closed in on Haiti’s capital Friday, bands of militants terrorized residents — erecting flaming barricades and threatening to kill anyone opposing President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
At least five people were reported killed in isolated clashes, several in apparent execution-style slayings on crowded city streets. And rebels who have overtaken more than a dozen cities in a three-week march across Haiti advanced to within 25 miles of the capital on Friday.
In Washington, the Pentagon was considering whether to send 2,200 Marines to remain off the coast as a precaution, officials said. The U.S. sent 50 Marines earlier this week to help guard the U.S. Embassy and its staff.
The uprising, which has left more than 80 people dead since it began Feb. 5, appeared headed to a standoff in Port-au-Prince as the rebels vowed to choke off or take the capital to oust Aristide or force his resignation.
On Friday, hundreds of looters ransacked businesses and the city’s port area, breaking into containers and freight offices and carting off everything from frozen meat to television sets. One looter who refused to pay a bribe to pro-Aristide gangs was shot and killed, several witnesses reported.
Looters stripped hundreds of shipping containers filled with millions of dollars in goods from CARE and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
“You understand what is going on?” asked one angry looter as he carted a box of chicken stolen from the port. “We are hungry. They are the big shots. They have all this food and they keep it for themselves. We are taking it.”
Areas of downtown Port-au-Prince resembled war zones, with burning barricades and overturned cars. Business districts were ravaged by looters.
The bodies of five men were found on streets in several normally peaceful neighborhoods, apparently killed execution style. The hands of at least two were still bound.
Shotgun shells were neatly arranged near the bodies in symbolism not seen in Haiti since the early 1990s, when paramilitary gangs killed an estimated 5,000 people during the island nation’s last coup d’etat.
“We’re just living in shock and fear, my family, everyone,” said a 15-year-old girl standing nearby, asking not to be named for fear of reprisals.
“The whole world is coming apart,” said a 40-year-old man at the scene, also refusing to give his name. “These [slain] men weren’t from around here but they probably weren’t doing anything wrong, either. They just got caught after dark, and these animals, the gangs, killed them for no reason.”
Friday’s shootings and robberies appeared to be designed to sow terror among opponents of Aristide.
The rebellion aimed at ousting Aristide, Haiti’s first democratically elected president, was launched in the city of Gonaives. Rebels, as well as an organized opposition movement, are demanding his resignation because of what they describe as corruption and repression of political opponents.
But pro-Aristide gangs in the capital refuse to give in.
“We’ll die before we let those soldiers in,” said one pro-Aristide gang member, refusing to give his name, echoing the sentiments of many Aristide loyalists.
In front of the National Palace, hundreds of youths gathered in support of the president.
Armed with old rifles and pistols, machetes and even a rusty ax, they shouted “Five years! Five years!” Aristide was elected to a 5-year term that ends in February 2006.
In the current crisis, the president so far has agreed only to a U.S.-backed plan that requires him to share power with his opponents, a proposal that his foes have rejected.
But international support for the president is eroding.
On Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell suggested that Aristide might not be able to remain in power.
In Paris on Friday, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin met with Aristide’s chief of staff, Jean-Claude Desgranges, and his foreign minister, Joseph Antonio, and repeated his call for Aristide to resign.
“It’s for President Aristide, who bears a heavy responsibility in the current situation, to draw the consequences of the impasse,” officials said de Villepin told the Haitians.
It was not clear how the message was received.
Antonio abruptly canceled a scheduled news conference.
Meanwhile, the International Committee of the Red Cross said it had dispatched a plane to Haiti with enough equipment for two hospitals to aid victims of the political violence.
The equipment will help treat victims in Port-au-Prince and Gonaives.
