At least 60 dead in Jamaican slum standoff as police storm den of druglord wanted by U.S.

Residents look on in horror as a wounded man is rushed to hospital in Kingston at the start of the violence yesterday.

At least 60 people have died in Jamaica in a battle between police and a drug gang after police stormed the stronghold of a powerful druglord wanted by the U.S.
Thousands of police assaulted the Kingston council estate occupied by heavily armed gangsters as a three-day slum standoff over Christopher 'Dudus' Coke exploded into violence.
Hospital sources told the AFP news agency that at least 60 people had died in the fighting.

Violence: Smoke billows over the Tivoli Gardens community in the area of Kingston where reggae star Bob Marley lived as masked gunmen battle police trying to extradite a druglord to the U.S.

Christopher 'Dudus' Coke: The Jamaica Constabulary Force issued images of the underworld boss as the Prime Minister Bruce Golding agreed to extradite him to the U.S.
Jamaica's security forces, reeling from bold attacks by masked gangsters loyal to the underworld boss, were in the midst of a nearly daylong assault in the heart of West Kingston's ramshackle slums, long afflicted by gang strife.
The Jamaican government has already ordered a month-long state of emergency. Last night the Foreign Office was warning against all but essential travel to the Jamaican capital.
Yesterday was the third consecutive day of unrest.
The U.S. wants to extradite Coke to face cocaine-trafficking and drug-running charges.
It was not clear last night if he was still in Kingston or if he has managed to escape to another part of the country.
Many residents of the island nation's capital see Coke as a Robin Hood figure, a community leader, and have barricaded the Kingston slums to prevent his seizure by police.
'They say they are prepared to die for him,' Elizabeth Bennett, a radio reporter for Nationwide 90 FM, told reporters over the weekend.
Gangsters loyal to the underworld boss began barricading streets and preparing for battle immediately after Prime Minister Bruce Golding caved in to a growing public outcry over his opposition to extradition.

Security Minister Dwight Nelson said 'police are on top of the situation,' but gunfire was reported in several poor communities and brazen gunmen even shot up Kingston's central police station.
Police spokesman Corporal Richard Minott said that the fighting in West Kingston alone has killed 26 civilians one security official. Police had reported that earlier fighting killed two officers and a soldier.
Kingston streets outside the battle zones were mostly empty, schools and numerous businesses were closed, hospitals offered only emergency services and the government appealed for donations of blood.
The violence has not spilled into the capital's wealthier neighborhoods, but gangs from slums just outside the capital have joined the fight, erecting barricades on roadways and shooting at troops.
In Spanish Town, a rough community just outside the areas where the government has installed a state of emergency, police reported that a firefight killed two local people, including a little boy.
In the gang-heavy town of Portmore, police said gunmen sprayed bullets at a minivan ferrying local people. It was not clear if anyone died.
But West Kingston, which includes the Trenchtown slum where reggae superstar Bob Marley was raised, remains the epicentre of the violence.
The drug trade is deeply entrenched in Jamaica, which is the largest producer of marijuana in the region and where gangs have become powerful organized crime networks involved in international gun smuggling. It fuels one of the world's highest murder rates; the island of 2.8 million people had about 1,660 homicides in 2009.
A woman in Tivoli Gardens told Radio Jamaica that she and her terrified family were hunkered down in their apartment as a firefight raged outside.
'I really pray that somebody will find the love in their heart and stop this right now. It is just too much, my brother,' the woman told the station, the sound of a gunbattle nearby.
'The police is appealing to residents of Tivoli Gardens to desist from blocking the entrance to the community,' police force spokesman Karl Angell said in a statement.
'We are also appealing to the decent citizens of Tivoli Gardens who wish to leave to contact the police.'
Along the pitted and trash-strewn streets of West Kingston, residents say Coke is feared for his strong-arm tactics, but also is known for helping out slum dwellers with grocery bills, jobs and school fees.
He reportedly owns a company called Presidential Click that throws wild street parties in Tivoli Gardens each week and handles public works contracts in West Kingston's slums, where flatbed trucks have brought in huge stockpiles of construction materials to build in barricades against the police.