20 Gunmen Shoot Into Haiti Market

Twenty gunmen shot into a teeming crowd at a downtown market Thursday, wounding at least five people in a battle to control its lucrative trade.

Firing shots and robbing bystanders, the gang terrorized hundreds of buyers and sellers packed into the two-story iron-frame market known as Tete Boeuf.

At least five merchants were shot in the noon attack, said police spokesman Lt. Jean Yonel Trecil. He had no details on their wounds.

After the attack, merchants mobbed two vehicles and beat up their occupants on the assumption they were thieves, said a Canadian policeman. Reporters saw other people climb onto the roof of a building across the street from the market and lob stones into the crowd.

Members of the U.N. military mission and Haitian police arrived and quickly evacuated the market, but Haitian police provoked a second wave of panic when they shot in the air to stop the stone-throwing.

Four gunmen were arrested, including the alleged gang leader, Pierre Cadet. Trecil said Cadet was hired by former Tete Boeuf market director Patrick Bourdeau, who was fired and arrested last week for alleged extortion and racketeering. Bourdeau is still in jail, Trecil said.

A U.N. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the gunmen had been looking for the new market director, Patrick Pierre, presumably to kill him.

Port-au-Prince Mayor Evans Paul told The Associated Press that Bourdeau had been arrested three times previously, but was released after judges received death threats.

The approximately 2,000 merchants at the market offer everything from vegetables and meat to voodoo powders and elixirs. Paul said their wares also included cocaine.

“Bourdeau is trying to regain control of the market. That is why he is sowing this terror,” said Paul.

Crime is rising sharply in Haiti. Ninety-seven people were killed in March, including 45 presumed thieves killed by mobs.