Jamaica: 30 dead in drug gang battle
Thousands of heavily armed police and soldiers barged past barricades into Jamaica's most violent slums today, clashing with die-hard defenders of a gang leader sought by the US, leaving at least 30 people dead.
Jamaica’s security forces, reeling from bold attacks by masked gangsters loyal to underworld boss Christopher “Dudus” Coke, were in the midst of a day-long assault in the heart of capital West Kingston’s ramshackle slums, long afflicted by gang strife.
On the third consecutive day of unrest, masked gunmen in West Kingston vanished down side streets barricaded with barbed wire and wrecked 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.
Police spokesman Corporal Richard Minott said hat the fighting in West Kingston alone has killed 26 civilians and one security official. Police had reported that earlier fighting killed two officers and a soldier.
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 dropped his 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 violence has not spilled into the capital’s wealthier neighbourhoods, but gangs from slums just outside the capital have joined the fight, erecting barricades on roads and shooting at troops.
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 child.
In the gang-heavy town of Portmore, police said gunmen sprayed bullets at a minivan ferrying local people. It was not clear if anyone died.
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, whose represents West Kingston in Parliament, had claimed the US indictment relied on illegal wiretap evidence.
Security Minister Dwight Nelson said “police are on top of the situation,” but gunfire was reported in several poor communities and brazen gunmen even took aim at Kingston’s central police station.
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. It fuels one of the world’s highest murder rates; the island of 2.8 million people had about 1,660 in 2009.
In a sun-splashed island known more for reggae music and all-inclusive resorts, the violence erupted on Sunday afternoon after nearly a week of rising tensions over the possible extradition of Coke to the US, where he could face life in prison.
He leads one of the gangs that control politicised slums known as “garrisons”. Political parties created the gangs in the 1970s to rustle up votes. The gangs have since turned to drug trafficking, but each remains closely tied to a political party. Coke’s gang is tied to the governing Labour Party.
The US State Department said it was “the responsibility of the Jamaican government to locate and arrest Mr Coke”.
A US Embassy spokeswoman denied widespread rumours that US officials were meeting with Coke’s lawyers.
Coke’s lead attorney, Don Foote, said his legal team had planned to have talks with US officials at the embassy but the meeting was cancelled.
Foote refused to say whether Coke was in the barricaded Tivoli Gardens slum or was somewhere else in the country.
