HOT TRAVEL DEALS

Demonstrators shot and killed three officers, and were believed to have kidnapped a fourth, Justice Minister Bernard Gousse said. No deaths were reported among the marchers.

The violence came after armed rebels who toppled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February challenged U.N. peacekeepers at the entrance to the flood-ravage city of Gonaives, in a litmus test of a country where power appears to be up for grabs.

Thursday's violence ratcheted up tension in the country reeling from Tropical Storm Jeanne. Rescuers have recovered more than 1,550 bodies in northwest Haiti, most in the third-largest city of Gonaives, and some 900 are missing, according to government officials.

Several people were wounded by the gunfire in Port-au-Prince, U.N. spokesman Toussaint Kongo-Doudou said. He said U.N. troops believe a gunfight broke out between Aristide supporters and private security guards of shops looted during the march.

Judicial police chief Michael Lucius said there were exchanges of gunfire between police and demonstrators.

Supporters of Aristide, now in exile in South Africa, were commemorating the 13th anniversary of his 1991 ouster by Haiti's army. They also used the occasion to demand an end to "the occupation" and "the invasion" by foreign troops, which began with U.S. Marines replaced by U.N. peacekeepers in June.

Thousands of slumdwellers wound through downtown streets of Port-au-Prince, carrying photos of Aristide and chanting "Like it or not, Aristide will return!"

About an hour into the march, demonstrators passed through the plaza in front of the National Palace and were a few blocks away when shots rang out repeatedly and continued sporadically for 20 minutes.

Brazilian troops were in armored vehicles nearby, Kongo-Doudou said.

The marchers also directed their criticism at the United States, chanting "Down with Bush!"

Aristide has accused U.S. agents of kidnapping him when he was flown out of the country on a U.S.-chartered jet Feb. 29.

Rebels now have formed a political party which Aristide supporters - including a vast majority of Haiti's poor - say is aimed at returning power to the hands of a lighter skinned elite.

Aristide became Haiti's first freely elected president in 1990. He was ousted within months by the army, returned by a U.S. invasion in 1994, was forced to step down by U.S. pressure and a term limit, and was re-elected in 2000.

Associated Press reporters Paisley Dodds and Regine Alexandre in Port-au-Prince and Michael Norton in San Juan, Puerto Rico, contributed to this report.