Haiti cholera toll passes 1,000 as unrest fears grow

Burning tires wafted thick black smoke across the northern city of Cap-Haitien, where thousands of protesters went on the rampage Monday, setting a police station ablaze and threatening to torch a UN compound.

Two Haitians died in the riots, including one shot by a peacekeeper in an incident that raised fears of further unrest targeting the unpopular United Nations force, which is known by the acronym MINUSTAH.

Six UN peacekeepers were injured in a second protest Monday in the central city of Hinche, near the base of a Nepalese unit accused of bringing the Vibrio cholerae bacterium into the country.

"We are monitoring the situation in other towns where demonstrations were attempted this morning," a police officer told AFP Tuesday on condition of anonymity.

He said Interior Minister Paul-Antoine Bien-Aime and Haitian police chief Mario Andresol would lead a delegation to the north in the coming days to help restore calm.

The cholera death toll rose Tuesday to 1,034, the health ministry said, with about 16,800 people hospitalized since the disease surfaced in late October -- the quake-hit nation's first outbreak since the 1960s.