Haitians Angry Over Election Take to Streets
Mobs Paralyze Cities, Block Major Roads
By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, February 14, 2006; A01

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Feb. 13 -- Haiti's hopes for a peaceful presidential election exploded Monday in a torrent of violence as mobs overturned cars, set piles of tires ablaze and built elaborate roadblocks across major highways, protesting delays in the vote count and alleged fraud in last Tuesday's balloting.

Demonstrators paralyzed cities across the country, from Cap-Haitien in the north to this impoverished seaside capital, where tens of thousands of people took to the streets to demand that Rene Preval -- a former president and favorite of this city's poor -- be named president.

Haiti's distinctive "tap-taps," the colorfully painted trucks that ferry hundreds of thousands of passengers a day, were effectively stilled by roadblocks, set up by armed thugs demanding bribes, on the major arteries connecting cities.

In Port-au-Prince, at least one protester was killed, a luxury hotel was occupied by demonstrators and the international airport was closed. There were reports that U.N peacekeeping forces had shot into the crowds, but U.N. officials here said they had fired only into the air.

U.N. troops did not intervene when a boisterous crowd burst into the Montana Hotel, where election results were being prepared, and ran through the halls and jumped into the pool.