Port Au Prince: Anti-UN riots spread to several Haitian cities and towns on Tuesday as protesters who blame Nepalese peacekeepers for an outbreak of cholera that has killed more than 1,000 people exchanged gunfire with United Nations soldiers and blockaded major roads.
The protests left at least two demonstrators dead. The UN said it was investigating one of the deaths, but asserted that the soldier who killed the man was acting in self-defense.
It wasn't known who shot and killed the other protester.
The 12,000-member force reported that at least six UN workers were wounded at Hinche, in the central plateau; local Radio Metropole reported that at least 12 Haitians were injured in Cap-Haitien.
The protests apparently began in Cap-Haitien early on Monday and, within hours, had paralyzed much of the northern port city. As the day went on, protests broke out in surrounding towns. Reports said a police station was burned in Cap-Haitien and rocks thrown at peacekeeping bases.
The UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti dismissed the protests as politically motivated, linking them to the November 28 presidential elections.
It urged people to 'not be manipulated by enemies of stability and democracy'.
UN spokeswoman Corinne Momal-Vanian described the suspicion that Nepalese troops were to blame for the outbreak as 'misinformation'.
The cholera backlash plays upon some Haitians' long-standing resentment of the dominant security force in Haiti. It also is rooted in fear of a disease previously unknown to Haiti and the internationally-shared suspicion that the UN base could have been a source of the infection.
The country's health ministry said on Tuesday that the official death toll had passed 1,000, hitting 1,034 as of Sunday.
Figures are released following two days of review. Aid workers said official figures could be understating the epidemic: The health ministry says more than 16,700 people have been hospitalized nationwide, but Doctors Without Borders reports that its clinics alone have treated more than 12,000.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the cholera strain ravaging the country matched a strain specific to south Asia, but said it had not pinpointed how it arrived in Haiti.