26944: (news) Chamberlain: Gunmen wound three U.N. soldiers in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

     By Joseph Guyler Delva

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Dec 19 (Reuters) - Three Chilean soldiers with
the U.N. peacekeeping force in Haiti were ambushed and shot in the troubled
Caribbean nation, which holds elections next month, U.N. officials said on
Monday.
     A U.N. civilian spokesman in Haiti, Damian Onses-Cardona, said the
wounded peacekeepers were members of a road reconnaissance mission on
Friday in Plaisance, a town between the northern cities of Gonaives and
Cap-Haitien.
     "Two U.N. soldiers received minor injuries and the other one, more
seriously hit in the left arm, was repatriated to Chile on Sunday,"
Onses-Cardona said.
     Haiti has scheduled legislative and presidential elections for Jan. 8
amid concerns over security in a country gripped by political and gang
violence and a spate of kidnappings since a bloody rebellion forced
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from power on Feb. 29, 2004.
     Onses-Cardona said the two peacekeepers who were slightly wounded
would resume work on Monday and that such incidents would not deter U.N.
forces -- which number nearly 7,300 soldiers and 1,600 police -- from
carrying out their mission.
     Seven U.N. peacekeepers have died since the deployment of the U.N.
mission to stabilize Haiti in June, 2004 -- four of them in accidents.
Thirty others have been wounded, according to U.N. officials.