Preelection Bombings Kill 1, Hurt 14 in Haiti

Seven bombs exploded around this capital Wednesday, killing a teenage boy and injuring 14 people in an upsurge of violence before this weekend’s presidential election.

Clairvil Robinson, 14, was killed on a street in downtown Port-au-Prince when a bomb exploded next to him. Another bomb went off downtown, two exploded on the highway to the international airport and three in the suburb of Petionville, police and radio reports said.

Shopkeepers in Port-au-Prince closed their stores in panic. Supporters of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who is expected to win reelection in Sunday’s vote, set up flaming tire barricades to protest the violence.

Protesters carried the boy’s blood-soaked body on a march past the National Palace to the morgue.

The attacks were the latest in a series that has darkened the weeks preceding the Sunday election, in which Aristide and six little-known opponents are running for the presidency.

Main opposition parties have boycotted the race, charging that local and legislative elections earlier this year were rigged by the government in favor of Aristide’s Lavalas Family party, which won more than 80% of the seats. Aristide’s party and opposition spokesmen have accused each other of being responsible for the recent surge of violence.

On Nov. 10, unidentified suspects lobbed gasoline bombs in front of four electoral council buildings in the greater Port-au-Prince area, but no one was hurt.

On Nov. 2, self-proclaimed Lavalas Family partisans in Hinche, 45 miles north of the capital, opened fire on a meeting of the Papaye Peasants Movement, the biggest rural workers organization in Haiti. They wounded the brother of an outspoken Aristide critic.