President Seized in Haiti Revolt : Caribbean: Rebel soldiers shoot up palace. Numerous deaths reported. Government negotiates for life of Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Rebellious Haitian soldiers seized President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from the presidential palace in Port-au-Prince on Monday after shooting up his private home and causing numerous deaths and injuries during a daylong rampage through the capital.

Aristide’s fate remained unknown late Monday.

But Foreign Minister Jean-Robert Sabalat said the president and his staff had been taken to army headquarters near the National Palace, and the government was negotiating “to at least save the president’s life,” he told the Associated Press.

In a report from Port-au-Prince, Reuters news agency quoted an unidentified source as saying of the rebels and Aristide, “They wanted to lynch him, but they took him to general headquarters instead.”

The military uprising apparently began Sunday night when soldiers at two bases mutinied, then gathered momentum after the attack on Aristide’s house early Monday.

There was no indication late Monday that the uprising in the coup-plagued country was part of an organized uprising, nor had any leaders emerged in public to take credit.

But reports from Port-au-Prince quoted Western diplomats as saying that “the army command is not in control” and “this is going to be a horrifying night.”

Aristide’s leaderless government appeared to be in disarray. “We’re in serious trouble,” said one Cabinet minister quoted by the AP.

Capital radio stations reported that numerous bodies were lying in the streets and that soldiers in jeeps were driving through the city firing their weapons.

Sources at the city’s general hospital said at least 26 people were killed and 200 wounded by the gunfire, according to independent Radio Cacique. Only one of Port-au-Prince’s dozen radio stations, the Roman Catholic station Radio Soleil, continued broadcasting news after armed attacks on some of them.

One of Haiti’s leading politicians, Protestant minister Sylvio Claude, was killed and set on fire by a mob in the southern provincial town of Cayes on Sunday night, according to an AP report. Claude, 57, had been an outspoken opponent of the Duvaliers, who had imprisoned him. More recently, Claude had criticized Aristide. He had run twice for the presidency.

Aristide, 38, a fiery Roman Catholic ghetto priest, became the first Haitian leader in history to reach office through free, fair elections that were overseen last January by the United Nations and other international groups. He was inaugurated in February with such overwhelming public support that the Haitian military and other opposition groups were fearful of mob vengeance if they tried to stand in his way.

According to reports from Haiti, the slight, bespectacled president was unhurt by the gunfire at his private home. He preferred his simple concrete block, suburban house with a security fence to the ornate downtown palace from which Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier and his son Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) ruled for three decades.

After the attack, loyal troops escorted him to the fortress-like National Palace in an armored car, where it was thought he would be safer. He was accompanied by Jean-Rafael Dufour, France’s ambassador to Haiti, radio reports said.

Although the convoy came under fire from rebellious troops along the way, it reached the palace and for a time Aristide appeared to be in control and the streets seemed to be calming, according to reports from Haiti.

But rebel troops stormed the palace at about 5:30 p.m., killing one of Aristide’s loyal army officers. They arrested the president and his staff, the reports said.

The U.S. Embassy condemned the uprising as “outrageous,” and the U.S. State Department urged Haiti’s military “to respect the constitutional order.” But it indicated that there were no plans to intervene militarily on Aristide’s behalf.

In Miami, protests broke out in the Little Haiti section after news of Aristide’s arrest was learned. A local Haitian radio station, WLQY, reported Monday night that it had received phone calls from Haiti and that “the only thing they know is that the president is alive.”

Although no leaders of the uprising emerged, an unidentified soldier was heard on Radio Soleil explaining that the rebels had objected to what they claimed was an Aristide program to form an elite commando unit of civilians trained by Swiss specialists. He said the soldiers demanded that the unit be disbanded.

The soldier added that the rebels had six other demands, including that the government confirm the appointments of nine senior officers whom Aristide had given only interim appointments to the high command. Dissident military men had complained that Aristide had withheld permanent appointments to keep the officers under his control

Aristide had moved quickly after his inauguration to begin reforming the country’s notoriously undisciplined 7,000-man armed forces, cashiering most of its senior officers and appointing younger, more democratically inclined men in their places.

Ironically, the young president had never appeared more confident that his “little people,” who called him Titide (Little Aristide), could surmount any challenge on the road to a stable democracy in the strife-torn country.

“Democracy has won out for good, the roots are growing stronger and stronger,” he said after his maiden speech to the United Nations in New York last week. It was his first trip abroad since his election, and he was hailed as a savior by joyous crowds of Haitians in New York and Miami.

The charismatic priest-turned-president had until now worn what most Haitians saw as an aura of invincibility.

Three times when he was railing against dictatorship and military rule, Aristide--almost miraculously--escaped assassination attempts. The most recent was in 1988 when army-supported thugs, reportedly acting under orders of the former army colonel who was then mayor of Port-au-Prince, invaded his church during a service and massacred 12 of his parishioners with clubs and machetes.