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.

It was not immediately clear what was happening inside the patchwork of slums where Coke’s supporters began massing last week after Prime Minister Bruce Golding droppedhis nine-month refusal to extradite Coke, who has ties to his political party.

Kingston streets outside the battle zones were mostly empty, schools and numerous businesses were closed, hospitals offered only emergency services and the government appealed for donations of blood. The government on Sunday implemented a month-long state of emergency.

The number of dead and wounded was unclear from inside poor areas where clashes erupted.

In Spanish Town, a rough community just outside the areas where the government has installed a state of emergency, police reported that a firefight killed two local people, including a little boy.

But West Kingston, which includes the Trenchtown slum where reggae superstar Bob Marley was raised, remains the epicentre of the violence.

Gangsters loyal to Coke began barricading the area’s streets and preparing for battle immediately after Golding caved in last Monday to a growing public outcry over his opposition to extradition. Jamaica’s leader, who represents West Kingston in parliament, had claimed the US indictment relied on illegal wiretap evidence.

The drug trade is deeply entrenched in Jamaica, which is the largest producer of marijuana in the region and where gangs have become powerful organised crime networks involved in international gun smuggling.

The violence erupted on Sunday after nearly a week of rising tensions over the possible extradition of Coke to the United States, where he faces a possible sentence of life in prison.