GEORGETOWN, Guyana - Gunmen stormed into a coastal village early Saturday and shot dead 11 people, the president said, in escalating violence blamed on a gang leader who has threatened widespread attacks.
The killings in Lusignan marked the deadliest massacre in this small South American country in 30 years and came hours after gunmen attacked police headquarters in the capital, firing indiscriminately and wounding two guards.
Three children were among the dead in Lusignan, about 12 kilometres east of Georgetown, the capital.
"(This) could not have been done by human being but rather by animals,'' President Bharrat Jagdeo said as he prepared for meetings with security officials and the military. He said he would go to the village to meet with grieving relatives later in the day.
On Wednesday night, suspected gang members killed a Guyanese soldier during a gunbattle in Buxton, a village located three kilometres from Lusignan.
Police and government officials say they suspect a gang led by Rondell Rawlins, a former Guyanese soldier, is behind the violence. Rawlins has accused security forces of kidnapping his pregnant 18-year-old girlfriend days ago and police say he threatened to carry out attacks until she is found. Police said they are probing the woman's disappearance.
Rawlins is accused of being a crime boss since 2002, and blame him for the April 2006 slaying of Agriculture Minister Satyadeo Sawh, a murder that authorities said was aimed at destabilizing this former Dutch and British colony.
In 1978, the American cult leader Jim Jones exhorted his followers to drink a cyanide-laced grape punch in Jonestown, a Guyana settlement named for him. Hours later, 912 of Jones' followers were dead. Jones was found with a bullet wound in his head. Whether it was suicide or murder is unknown.
