AP News, January 30th, 2007
The United Nations said Tuesday it will send 350 more peacekeepers to Haiti in the latest effort to flush out armed gangs from the capital's slums.
The light infantry battalion of Nepalese soldiers began arriving this week and will be fully deployed by early March, the U.N. mission said in a statement.
Maj. Gen. Carlos Alberto Dos Santos Cruz, the Brazilian commander of the 9,000-strong U.N. force, said some of the Nepalese troops will be deployed as early as this week in Cite Soleil, a gang-controlled slum on the edge of the capital of Port-au-Prince.
"I am determined to increase the pressure on the gangs who have been holding the innocent people of Haiti hostage for so long," Santos Cruz said in the statement. "We must not give the gangs time to relax."
Peacekeepers arrived in Haiti in July 2004 to quell violence after a bloody revolt toppled former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti's first democratically elected leader and a champion of the poor.
U.N. troops in recent weeks have stepped up offensives against armed gangs blamed for a wave of killings and kidnappings in the Caribbean nation's capital.
Since their arrival, peacekeepers have made several attempts to secure the slum but have struggled to root out the gangs, which often shoot at passing U.N. patrols and then retreat deep within the sprawling, mazelike shantytown.
Residents of Cite Soleil have accused the force of killing civilians during nighttime raids in the densely populated area of flimsy wooden shacks. The U.N. says its troops only fire when attacked on and try to limit civilian casualties.
