Seven killed in Haiti coup bid

Haiti’s beleaguered government has thwarted an apparent coup attempt, with police recapturing the National Palace from armed men in a day of violence that killed at least seven people.

The attack prompted revenge attacks by supporters of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who took to the streets with machetes and torched the homes and offices of opposition leaders.

Police said 33 men stormed the palace in the capital, Port-au-Prince, in the hours before dawn yesterday, killing two police officers and later two passers-by as some of them fled.

Three other people, including one of the attackers, died as violence spread.

The police said they were searching for dozens of conspirators who escaped.

‘‘We have thwarted the coup, but it’s not all over,’’ Aristide said in a speech at the palace. ‘‘The Haitian people will not have to live in hiding ever again.’’

At the time of the attack, the president and his family were at their home in suburban Tabarre, three miles away from his office in the National Palace, said palace spokesman Jacques Maurice.

Haiti’s airports and border with Dominican Republic were closed, and airlines cancelled flights. The violence prompted the US Embassy to close and urge Americans in the impoverished Caribbean country to stay home.

After the attack, hundreds of Aristide supporters surrounded the palace, wielding machetes and shouting, ‘‘We’ll never accept another coup d’etat.’’

Police later arrested one wounded and heavily armed man in a pick-up truck on a road to Dominican Republic, police spokesman Jean-Dady Simeon said.

A government official said that in radio transmissions the attackers identified their leader as the former police chief of northern Cap-Haitien city, Guy Philippe, who fled to Dominican Republic last year with seven police officers accused of plotting a coup.

But Philippe called the media from Dominican Republic to deny any involvement, saying the attack was ‘‘a staged event to give a pretext for attacking the opposition’’.

Aristide became Haiti’s first democratically elected president in 1990 but was ousted by the army just eight months later.

He was restored to power in 1994 by US troops. When a term limit forced him to step down in 1996, he was replaced by his protege, Rene Preval.

Aristide was re-elected in November 2000 and began his second term in February.

Yesterday Aristide urged an end to the violence. But his followers took to the streets anyway, setting ablaze the headquarters of the Convergence opposition alliance in the capital and three buildings belonging to opposition parties.

The homes of opposition leaders Gerard Pierre-Charles and Victor Benoit were burned down.

Aristide supporters also burned the home of opposition leader Luc Mesadieu in northern Gonaives city. Two men were killed there by the mob and their bodies were burned, independent Haiti Inter radio reported.

‘‘I don’t know what happened at the National Palace, but it has become a pretext to massacre the opposition,’’ said opposition leader Gerard Gourgue, who went into hiding in fear of his life.

The attack began when the armed men lobbed a grenade at the National Palace and opened fire as they entered, Maurice said. Two police officers were killed and six were injured, he said.

Some attackers fled the palace in a pick-up truck, national radio reported. The gunmen shot and killed two passers-by as they fled, witnesses said.

By mid-morning, police had regained control of the palace, shooting and killing one gunman. He, like others in the group, was dressed in the khaki fatigues of Haiti’s former army, which Aristide disbanded in 1995. The gunman’s body was shown on national television in a pool of blood.

Since Aristide’s Lavalas Family party swept parliamentary and local elections in May 2000, Haiti has been mired in unrest, with the opposition calling the elections fraudulent and foreign donors refusing to release hundreds of millions of dollars in aid until results are revised.

There also has been mounting grassroots opposition to Aristide within his party. Protesters accuse Aristide of failing to deliver on promises of basic services like sanitation and electricity.