Here are a couple more news stories about the UN from Haiti over the weekend:

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AFP) - Twenty-four hours of clashes between UN forces and armed gangs in the Haitian capital's sprawling slum of Cite Soleil have left at least five people dead and 12 wounded by gunfire, the UN mission in Haiti said.

"Four people, all likely gang members, were killed in clashes Wednesday at dawn between the blue helmets and gunmen," said a spokesman for the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH).

Six people were wounded during a MINUSTAH operation "to take over a house near an important road controlled by the gangs that also served as a base for attacks against UN forces," the spokesman said.

The gangs were extorting money from truck drivers and motorists on the busy road, he added.

A woman wounded at Cite Soleil died a few hours later, late Wednesday, at Saint Catherine Hospital, run by the humanitarian group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) inside the shantytown.

"We received seven wounded on Wednesday evening. Among them were three women, one of whom died several hours after having been admitted to hospital," Fabio Pompetti of the MSF team working at the local hospital told AFP.

"We're preparing more interventions in high-risk areas of Port-au-Prince," the MINUSTAH spokesman said.

Over two decades, Haiti has suffered from political violence and instability, notably since the departure of then-president Jean Bertrand Aristide in February 2004 amid a popular uprising.

After Aristide's exit into exile, a force of over 7,200 UN soldiers and 2,000 police went to the impoverished Caribbean country to maintain order while an interim regime sought to restore stability.

More than half of the Caribbean island's 8.4 million people live below the extreme poverty line of one dollar a day, according to UN officials.

Courtesy of Yahoo News


And the other:

At least five people were killed and six wounded after a United Nations peacekeeping force raided a slum in Haiti this week.

Colonel Abdesslam Elamarti, a UN military spokesman, said on Friday the force was stepping up efforts to eject heavily armed criminal gangs from slums in the capital, Port-au-Prince. "We are now intensifying our operations in those areas where the gangs operate to make sure the people can go about their activities," Elamarti said.

He said four people were killed on Wednesday during clashes between UN troops and gunmen in Cite Soleil, a shantytown in the city. The Cite Soleil slum, one of the most poverty-stricken areas in Haiti, is run by warring gangs and so overcrowded that some residents sleep in shifts.

It was not clear whether those killed were gang members or civilians caught in the cross fire.

"We were conducting an operation to take over a building used by the bandits to launch attacks at our troops," Elamarti said.

Another person wounded in the same incident died that day in a hospital operated by the humanitarian organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), according to a hospital spokesman.

UN officials said they have been instructed to intervene in other slums considered hotbeds of violence and crime, such as Martissant, south of the capital, where a freelance photojournalist, Jean Remy Badiau, was shot dead last week.

Badiau was killed because he took pictures of gang members who have been fighting for control of the slum, according to his wife.

The UN force has been in Haiti since shortly after the former president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was ousted in an armed rebellion in February 2004.

Politically motivated violence appears to have receded since the election Rene Preval, highly popular among the country's poor, as president almost a year ago.

But poverty, joblessness and the drug trade continue to fuel widespread crime.

Photo and News Courtesy of Al Jazeera News

Here is an interesting personal perspective: Haiti on the Brink