Three Guyana Police shot pursuing govt sponsored gang

Associated Press – GEORGETOWN, Guyana

Scores of soldiers and policemen surrounded the group, led by Guyana’s most-wanted fugitive, late Saturday near the South American country’s border with Suriname.

But fugitive Rondell Rawlins and his gang repelled the initial attack and managed to escape deeper into the jungle after injuring three police officers, police spokesman Ivelaw Whittaker said. One gang member was killed.

President Bharrat Jagdeo has accused Rawlins and his cohorts of planning meticulous and deadly assaults on the coastal village of Lusignan and the mining town of Bartica earlier this year. He also has linked Rawlins’ gang to the 2006 assassination of Agriculture Minister Satyadeo Sawh.

On Sunday, Whittaker said police recovered several rifles, nearly 2,000 rounds of ammunition, stores of food, and a diary that he says provides ‘incontrovertible evidence of Rondell Rawlins’ planning and execution of the killings at Lusignan and Bartica.”

Whittaker also said that security forces at the jungle hideout found electronic equipment that belonged to police from the western river town of Bartica, where gunmen killed 12, including three police officers, in a February assault.

A heavily armed gang suspected of killing 23 people in two recent massacres drove back a security assault at its hideout in dense Amazonian jungle, Guyanese police said Sunday.

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