3 Killed in Haiti Fighting

United Nations troops fought the bloodiest clash of their 10-month-old mission in Haiti on Sunday, when a raid to remove ex-soldiers occupying a police station erupted into a gun battle that killed three people, including a U.N. peacekeeper, officials said.

The Sri Lankan peacekeeper who died in the raid in Petit-Goave, a stronghold for former soldiers about 35 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince, the capital, was the first killed in battle since the U.N. force arrived, said Toussaint Kongo-Doudou, a U.N. spokesman. Two former Haitian soldiers also died, and three peacekeepers and 10 ex-soldiers were wounded, he said.

The U.N. troops entered Petit-Goave before dawn. Using a loudspeaker, the Brazilian commander of U.N. troops in Haiti, Lt. Gen. Augusto Heleno Ribeiro, had been trying for 20 minutes to get the former soldiers to surrender when they opened fire on U.N. troops, Kongo-Doudou said.

“We wanted to resolve this peacefully, but our troops received a hostile response from the insurgents, and so they responded with force,” he said.

Gerard Nelson, a Petit-Goave resident, was sleeping about a block from the police station when he was awoken by gunfire and ran outside. “There were bullets bouncing off the walls. People on the street were running to get out of the way. It sounded like a war,” Nelson said.

The battle was the first major confrontation between the 7,400-strong U.N. force and former members of Haiti’s disbanded army, who helped oust former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in a 1991 coup and again in an armed rebellion a year ago.

Despite the presence of the peacekeepers, armed rebels and former soldiers still control much of Haiti’s countryside, and the U.N. troops have been criticized for failing to curb violence.