Police target Jamaica drug lord’s slum base

THOUSANDS of heavily armed police and soldiers continued an assault into the capital’s most violent downtown slums yesterday, scouring buildings for weapons and battling die-hard defenders of a powerful Jamaican gang leader sought by the US.

Jamaica’s security forces, reeling from attacks by masked gangsters loyal to underworld boss Christopher “Dudus” Coke, were in the midst of a nearly day-long assault in the heart of West Kingston’s ramshackle slums, long afflicted by gang strife.

Yesterday, the third consecutive day of unrest, masked gunmen in West Kingston vanished down side streets barricaded with barbed wire and junked cars intended to block outsiders. The sound of gunfire echoed across the neighbourhoods in Jamaica’s south coast, far from the all-inclusive tourist meccas of the north shore.