31 die as Jamaican clashes escalate

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

• Soldiers on guard in Kingston. Picture: PA

Officials said at least 31 people have died.

Jamaica's security forces, reeling from bold attacks by masked gangsters loyal to underworld boss Christopher "Dudus" Coke, were in the midst of a near-day-long assault in the heart of west Kingston's slums, long afflicted by gang strife.

Yesterday, on the third consecutive day of unrest, masked gunmen in the west of the city vanished down side streets barricaded with barbed wire and junked cars intended to block outsiders.

Gunmen shot at police while trying to erect barricades in a poor section of St Catherine parish. A police station in an outlying area of Kingston was also showered with bullets by a roving band of gunmen with high-powered rifles.

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 Jamaica's 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.

On Sunday, the government 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 roadways and shooting at troops.

Police reported that a firefight killed several local people, including a little boy, and while the number of dead was unclear from inside poor areas where clashes erupted, Jamaican officials were putting the death toll at 11 at least.

Meanwhile, 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 Mr Golding caved in last Monday to a growing public outcry over his opposition to extradition.

The prime minister, who represents west Kingston in parliament, had claimed the US indictment relied on illegal wiretap evidence.

Security minister Dwight Nelson insisted last night that "police are on top of the situation", but gunfire was reported in several poor communities and brazen gunmen even shot up 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.

The trade fuels one of the world's highest murder rates; the island of 2.8 million people had about 1,660 homicides in 2009.

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

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 American officials were currently 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.

Pressed to pinpoint his client's location, Mr Foote refused to say whether Coke was "hunkered down" in the barricaded Tivoli Gardens slum or hiding somewhere else.