Gunfire echoes in Jamaica slums

Thousands of heavily armed Jamaican police and soldiers have continued their assault into the slums of the island's capital, Kingston,battling followers of a gang leader wanted in the United States.

Jamaica's security forces, reeling from attacks by masked gangsters loyal to Christopher "Dudus" Coke, were bogged down in the heart of West Kingston's ramshackle slums.

Yesterday, the third consecutive day of unrest, masked gunmen in West Kingston vanished down side streets barricaded with barbed wire and wrecked cars used as road blocks. The sound of gunfire echoed across the districts in Jamaica's south coast, far from the all-inclusive tourist meccas of the north shore.

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Coke's supporters began massing last week after Prime Minister Bruce Golding dropped his nine-month refusal to extradite him.

Kingston streets outside the battle zones were mostly empty, schools and businesses were closed, hospitals offered only emergency services and the government appealed for donations of blood.

The violence has not spilled into the capital's wealthier

neighbourhoods, but gangs from slums just outside the city have joined the fight, building barricades on roads and shooting at troops.

The number of dead and wounded was unclear from poor areas where

clashes erupted.

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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.

In the gang-heavy town of Portmore, police said gunmen sprayed bullets at a mini-van ferrying local people. It was not clear if anyone died.

But West Kingston, which includes the Trenchtown slum where reggae star 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 on Monday to a growing public outcry over his opposition to extradition. Jamaica's leader, whose represents West Kingston in Parliament, had claimed the US charges relied on illegal wiretap evidence.

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Security Minister Dwight Nelson said "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, the largest producer of marijuana in the region, 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 homicides 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 United States, where he faces a possible sentence of 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.

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The US State Department said it was "the responsibility of the Jamaican government to locate and arrest Mr. Coke."

Jamaican police said last night that at least 30 people had now died in the fighting between police and the drug gangs.

A police spokesman said the fighting in West Kingston alone had led to 26 civilian deaths and one of the security forces. Earlier fighting killed two officers and a soldier.

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