Witnesses said mobs threw flaming tires and mountains of rocks into the streets to block police officers from entering some neighborhoods.
Militant supporters of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide blocked a demonstration planned by civic opposition groups in the capital on Thursday, erecting barricades of flaming tires and throwing rocks at anyone who tried to breach their blockade.
Rebels and residents have set up barricades of flaming tires, wrecked cars and felled trees on roads leading to Gonaïves, Saint-Marc and Cap-Haïtien, preventing trucks from delivering fuel for power generators.
But the images that began the show, which was being broadcast this evening in the United States, were not: Palestinian youths throwing stones, Israeli soldiers shooting back, flaming tires, dead bodies, utter chaos, just like the images in 1988.
Far down a rubble-strewn avenue, filled with chunks of concrete, flaming tires and spent bullet casings, stood his targets -- teenagers like him, for instance, Guy Stencil, 19, a slender, baby-faced Israeli corporal who is transformed into an imposing, impassive figure when he dons his riot gear.
"We are in Jerusalem, and we are here to stay". On the Gaza frontier, flaming tires set alight by protesters sent columns of black smoke aloft as demonstrators fled Israeli fire, some of it from tanks.
By late morning, other smoldering vehicles could be seen along the road, as well as the burning shipping containers and piles of flaming tires.
One person was killed as protesters blocked highways with flaming tires and forced schools, businesses and transportation services to shut down.
A notorious gangster's kidnapping a matinee idol would transfix the public of any nation, but perhaps only in India would it provoke groups of fans to stone passing cars, blockade major roads with flaming tires, press shopkeepers to pull down their shutters -- and bring life in a bustling metropolis to a halt.
