PORT-AU-PRINCE – Protesters in Haiti, blaming United Nations troops for a cholera epidemic that has killed hundreds of people, attacked UN peacekeepers in two cities. One protester was shot dead in the clashes and six UN peacekeepers were injured. The UN mission blamed the violence in Cap-Haitien and Hinche on political agitators it said were bent on stirring up unrest ahead of presidential and legislative elections set for November 28 in the earthquake-hit Caribbean country. In Cap-Haitien, Haiti's second city on the north coast, UN blue helmets were fired on by armed demonstrators and one demonstrator was killed when a peacekeeper opened fire in self-defense, the UN mission (MINUSTAH) said in a statement. UN troops also used tear gas against the protesters. "MINUSTAH reiterates its firm commitment to support the Haitian national police in maintaining order and security in the country to guarantee the continuation of the electoral process and Haiti's reconstruction," the UN statement said. At Hinche in the central region, UN peacekeepers were among several people injured by stone-throwing protesters who attacked Nepalese troops stationed there. The Nepalese have been the subject of widespread rumors that they brought the cholera bacteria behind the month-long epidemic of the deadly disease in Haiti that has killed more than 900 people and sickened close to 15,000. The UN mission, which is helping the impoverished country rebuild after a devastating earthquake in January, has denied rumors that latrines close to a river at the Nepalese UN camp were the cause of the cholera outbreak. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said DNA testing shows the cholera strain in Haiti is most closely related to a strain from South Asia. But it has not pinpointed the source or linked it directly to the Nepalese troops, whom the UN says tested negative for the disease. Officials and residents in Cap-Haitien said earlier on Monday that hundreds of protesters yelling anti-UN slogans had set up burning barricades and torched a police station. "The whole city is blocked, businesses and schools have closed, cars have been burned. It's chaos here," a businessman in Cap-Haitien, Georgesmain Prophete, told Reuters. The cholera epidemic has inflicted another crisis on the Western Hemisphere's poorest state as it struggles to rebuild from the earthquake that killed more than 250,000 people. Fear, uncertainty and anger have swept a country already traumatized by the earthquake, which also left 1.5 million people homeless.
