Haiti Uprising Spreads To Key City

Former soldiers took Haiti's rebellion to the key central city of Hinche, torching the police station and freeing prisoners as President Jean-Bertrand Aristide appealed for international help to end an 11-day-old uprising.

Rebels now control most roads leading in and out of the Artibonite, Haiti's breadbasket and home to almost 1 million people, and have cut off northern Haiti by chasing police from a dozen towns.

"Blood has flowed in Hinche," Aristide told reporters late Monday, saying he had asked for technical assistance from the Organization of American States. "It may be that the police cannot cope with this kind of attack."

Fearing an exodus, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Ron Redmond said the agency was meeting in Washington with U.S. and Caribbean officials to discuss how to cope with any flight of Haitians. UNHCR officials also have met with Cuban authorities, he said.

"We would certainly hope that these governments would receive fleeing asylum seekers," with UNHCR ready to help, Redmond told reporters.

Witnesses said about 50 rebels descended Monday on the station in Hinche and killed three officers before the police fled the city of 50,000. Hinche is about 70 miles northeast of Port-au-Prince.

They said the rebels were led by Louis-Jodel Chamblain, a former soldier who also headed the feared paramilitary group FRAPH — the Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti — which killed and maimed hundreds of Aristide supporters under military dictatorship between 1991 and 1994.

Aristide, a slum priest who preached revolution to Haiti's poor, swept 1990 elections to become the country's first freely elected leader. He was ousted in a coup in 1991, restored when the United States sent 20,000 troops to Haiti 1994, and disbanded the army in 1995.

In its place is a 5,000-member police force trained to deal with riots, not combat, that in outlying posts is outnumbered and outgunned by the rebels.

There are not believed to be more than 100 rebels in Gonaives, where the rebellion to oust Aristide exploded Feb. 5. But they repelled a police attack to retake the city last week in fighting that killed 30 people, mostly officers, according to the Haitian Red Cross.

At least 56 people have died as the revolt has spread from Gonaives, about 70 miles northwest of Port-au-Prince.

Reprisal killings and torching of homes continue in both rebel-held and police-held areas. On Sunday night, Aristide loyalists reportedly killed two anti-government supporters in the port town of St. Marc.

Aristide refused Monday to discuss strategies for halting the revolt or say whether he was asking for military assistance.

"A group of terrorists are breaking democratic order," Aristide said. "We have the responsibility to use the law and dialogue to take a peaceful way" to quell the uprising that has blocked food, fuel and medical shipments to northern Haiti.

France, Haiti's former colonizer, said it was ready to help.

France said it is ready to send humanitarian aid to Haiti and looking into idea of military support, reports CBS News Correspondent Elaine Cobbe.

But Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin told France-Inter radio "that supposes a spurt of effort by Haiti's political class, that President Aristide commits himself to a respect of civil peace."

"A solution now rests on the back of the Caribbean Community and the Organization of American States to either help broker a peaceful solution with Aristide's opponents — or expect an intervention by an international police force led by France, Canada, and perhaps, the U.S.," CBS News Foreign Affairs Analyst Pamela Falk said.

Discontent has grown in Haiti, a nation of 8 million people, since Aristide's party swept flawed legislative elections in 2000 and international donors froze millions of dollars.

Aristide is accused of using the police and armed militants to stifle dissent and allowing corrupt officials to enrich themselves while Haitians suffer deepening poverty.

Opposition politicians refuse to participate in new elections unless Aristide steps down, and the rebels say they will lay down their weapons only when he is ousted.

On Monday rebels escorted an aid convoy past shipping containers, old refrigerators and burned-out cars blocking the entrance to Gonaives.

Led by the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross, the convoy carried 1.6 tons of supplies, including blood and surgical equipment.

A surgeon and a physician arrived to treat some 40 people wounded in the fighting. Hospital administrator Gabriel Honorat said the wounded are being cared for in their homes following a battle at the hospital in which police killed three bystanders.

"We have no medicine. It is urgent," he said.

Doctors Without Borders said it was sending 16 tons of medical equipment to Haiti, mainly surgical and dressing kits.

In addition, the aid agency CARE began distributing vegetable oil and cereals to about 50,000 needy people in Gonaives, where prices of food and fuel have shot up.

The rebels meanwhile, boasted of the new allies that once were their archenemies. "They have joined us. We have created a national resistance," Winter Etienne said Monday. "We're going to take a major part of Haiti."

Etienne was a leader of a gang that says Aristide armed them to terrorize his opponents in Gonaives. They turned on the president when gang leader Amiot Metayer was assassinated last year. Gang members say he was killed to stop him giving damaging information about Aristide — a charge the president denies.

The rebel reinforcements are believed to come from the Dominican Republic and include Guy Philippe, the police chief of Cap-Haitien who fled to the Dominican Republic after being accused of fomenting a coup in 2002.

Etienne said Philippe would attack Cap-Haitien, Haiti's second-largest city, where Aristide supporters have built barricades across roads and burned homes of opponents.

"We don't have any platform," said Philippe, 35, in an interview taped Saturday in Gonaives that was obtained by Associated Press Television News. "Our fight is for a better country ... We are fighting for the presidency, we're fighting for the people."