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Jamaica: Gun battles intensifying, spreading
Jamaica: Gun battles intensifying, spreading
KINGSTON, Jamaica - Jamaica's security forces clashed for a second day with masked gunmen allied with an alleged drug kingpin facing extradition to the U.S. as fighting spread Monday to more volatile slums around the capital.
Police and soldiers came under sustained heavy fire in the West Kingston stronghold of Christopher "Dudus" Coke, who has been indicted in the U.S. on drug and arms trafficking charges. Military helicopters with mounted guns buzzed above the impoverished area between plumes of black smoke.
A series of explosions boomed across West Kingston while hundreds of security agents assaulted Coke's barricaded base of Tivoli Gardens in a coordinated operation against drug gangsters whose arsenals rival police firepower.
Exact details were not known about casualties. Reuters reported that at least four people had been killed, including two policemen, one soldier and a civilian, and several others were wounded in two days of violence. The soldier was shot dead during Monday's fighting at Tivoli Gardens, the Caribbean island's first housing project.
'It is just too much'
A woman in the besieged slum told Radio Jamaica that she and her terrified family were hunkered down in their apartment as a firefight raged outside.
"I really pray that somebody will find the love in their heart and stop this right now. It is just too much, my brother," the woman told the station, the sound of gunfire popping nearby.
Clashes broke out Sunday, six days after Prime Minister Bruce Golding dropped his opposition to extraditing Coke, who has ties to the governing party. Golding had stalled the case for nine months claiming the U.S. indictment relied on illegal wiretap evidence, but he caved in to a growing public outcry over his stand.
After the reversal, Coke's supporters began barricading streets and preparing for battle.
West Kingston, which includes the Trenchtown slum where reggae superstar Bob Marley was raised, is the epicenter of the violence. But on Monday, security forces also came under fire in areas outside that patchwork of gritty slums in the capital on Jamaica's southeastern coast, far from the virtually crime-free tourist resorts on the north shore.
Gunmen shot at police while trying to erect barricades in a poor section of St. Catherine parish, which is just outside the two parishes where the government on Sunday implemented a monthlong state of emergency.
A police station in an outlying area of Kingston parish also was showered with bullets by a roving band of gunmen with high-powered rifles.
Police and soldiers came under sustained heavy fire in the West Kingston stronghold of Christopher "Dudus" Coke, who has been indicted in the U.S. on drug and arms trafficking charges. Military helicopters with mounted guns buzzed above the impoverished area between plumes of black smoke.
A series of explosions boomed across West Kingston while hundreds of security agents assaulted Coke's barricaded base of Tivoli Gardens in a coordinated operation against drug gangsters whose arsenals rival police firepower.
Exact details were not known about casualties. Reuters reported that at least four people had been killed, including two policemen, one soldier and a civilian, and several others were wounded in two days of violence. The soldier was shot dead during Monday's fighting at Tivoli Gardens, the Caribbean island's first housing project.
'It is just too much'
A woman in the besieged slum told Radio Jamaica that she and her terrified family were hunkered down in their apartment as a firefight raged outside.
"I really pray that somebody will find the love in their heart and stop this right now. It is just too much, my brother," the woman told the station, the sound of gunfire popping nearby.
Clashes broke out Sunday, six days after Prime Minister Bruce Golding dropped his opposition to extraditing Coke, who has ties to the governing party. Golding had stalled the case for nine months claiming the U.S. indictment relied on illegal wiretap evidence, but he caved in to a growing public outcry over his stand.
After the reversal, Coke's supporters began barricading streets and preparing for battle.
West Kingston, which includes the Trenchtown slum where reggae superstar Bob Marley was raised, is the epicenter of the violence. But on Monday, security forces also came under fire in areas outside that patchwork of gritty slums in the capital on Jamaica's southeastern coast, far from the virtually crime-free tourist resorts on the north shore.
Gunmen shot at police while trying to erect barricades in a poor section of St. Catherine parish, which is just outside the two parishes where the government on Sunday implemented a monthlong state of emergency.
A police station in an outlying area of Kingston parish also was showered with bullets by a roving band of gunmen with high-powered rifles.
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