HAITI: Haitian rebels battling to oust President Jean-Bertrand Aristide warned yesterday that an attack on the capital was imminent as heavily armed US security forces helped foreigners fleeing the country.
"The attack is imminent, and I ask the population to stay home when we attack Port-au-Prince," a rebel leader, Mr Guy Philippe, told local radio from Cap Haïtien, Haiti's second-largest city that was taken by rebels last weekend.
"I advise President Aristide to leave the national palace immediately. We will attack shortly at the national palace and capture him," the former police chief and soldier said.
He added he would be in the capital by Sunday to celebrate his 36th birthday.
A convoy of buses with diplomatic families, charity workers and a Haitian orphan on the way to a new family in Spain sped out of a UN compound. Wives and children wept as they waved goodbye to their husbands.
Barricades littered garbage-strewn streets before an expected attack by the rebels, many former soldiers who accuse Mr Aristide of being a corrupt thug.
But fewer pro-Aristide gangs roamed the streets than a day earlier, when motorists were forced to hand over money and mobile phones at the roadblocks.
Schools were closed and shops shuttered as many residents stayed at home. Some foreigners and Haitians crammed the airport to flee, fearing commercial flights to and from the country could soon be suspended.
More than 60 people have died in the Caribbean country in clashes that began on February 5th when the rebels, a collection of gangs and well-armed former soldiers, began the revolt by overrunning the western city of Gonaives.
A negotiated end seems distant. Opposition political groups, which distance themselves from the rebels, insist Mr Aristide must quit, frustrating US-backed efforts to bring an end to the conflict with a power-sharing accord.