Floods, mudslides kill three in Haiti's capital

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, May 25 (Reuters) Torrential rains triggered flooding and mudslides that killed three people in Haiti's capital, officials said today, raising fears of more destruction during the coming hurricane season.

''Three people were killed and 11 injured and several houses have been destroyed,'' Dieufort Deslorge, a spokesman for the civil protection office, told Reuters.

Hardest hit were the poor Carrefour-Feuille, Jacquet and Morne Lazarre neighborhoods. Deslorge urged residents living in flimsy huts on riverbeds and hillsides to take precautions.

''Those killed and injured were living in areas at risk,'' he said.

Torrential rains often turn deadly in impoverished and mountainous Haiti, especially in sprawling shantytowns.

Many Haitians are worried about the upcoming hurricane season. In 2004, spring flooding killed 2,000 people in the southern part of the country in May and flooding from Tropical Storm Jeanne killed 3,000 more in the port city of Gonaives in September.

''I've been living here for 10 years now in permanent fear of being one day taken away by floods,'' said Mariline Gustave, 27, who lives in the Port-au-Prince slum Cite Leternel. ''But I have no where else to go, so I leave it up to God.'' A senior advisor to the interior minister, who did not want to be named, said the government was contemplating measures to fight haphazard construction and to force residents to leave homes built in vulnerable areas.

Some said those steps were overdue.

''The government has to destroy those flimsy shacks built on riverbeds and on the hillsides,'' said a Port-au-Prince foreman, Joseph Lajoie. ''Politicians just don't want to take unpopular actions.'' REUTERS RN BST2302