A pregnant teenager and her two infant siblings were shot dead early yesterday in the community of Rema as post-election violence escalated in Kingston’s volatile western belt.

Two other persons were injured in the attack by gunmen, who residents claim came from nearby Tivoli Gardens. They also fire-bombed three homes.

Speculation was rife yesterday that the attacks on the Rema residents, which is in the South St Andrew constituency of ruling People’s National Party (PNP) finance minister Omar Davies, was in retaliation for the fire-bombing of three homes and the murder of one man in adjacent Denham Town, Wednesday night.

“Because of the attack on Race Course Land and Elgin Street on Thursday where three homes were destroyed by fire allegedly set by men from Rema, we believe the attack this morning is a reprisal by men from Denham Town,” said Superintendent Talbert White of the Denham Town police.

Such retaliation was “almost a reflex action” in these communities, White said.

There were echoes in the latest disturbances of last year’s months of violence between rival gangs in western Kingston that reached a crescendo over the July 7-10 weekend when the security forces and gunmen traded bullets, ending with the death of 27 people, including a policeman and a soldier.

“This war has been going on non-stop since 1999,” White said.

Last night the police imposed a curfew in a large swath of West Kingston/South St Andrew hoping to put a lid on the violence, which had simmered since the start of the election campaign.

Denham Town is part of Opposition Leader Edward Seaga’s West Kingston constituency, of which Tivoli Gardens is his most loyal enclave.

Shanique Reynolds, 15, and eight months pregnant and her twin sisters Chavelle and Sharon Malcolm, three, were asleep in their small wooden, shack in a Rema community called Pound-a-Month — for the cheap rental — when the gunmen struck. The infants apparently died in their sleep.

Shanique survived the initial fire and managed to come out of the house, intestines spilling. She soon died.

Michael Sloley, 43, lost a finger, which was shot off while he attempted, from a nearby high-rise building, to warn the people at Pound-a-Month about the attack. He remained in hospital yesterday. His common-law wife was treated and discharged.

Police collected at the scene 32 spent shells for AK47 and M16 rifles and for 9mm handguns.

Sharon Thomas, 38, the mother of the murdered children, said she was in her home at about 4:00 am when the gunmen kicked off, her door pointed guns at her and told her not to run.

Thomas, a higgler, disobeyed and ran from the house, leaving her three children in bed.

“Me hear a whole heap of gunshot fire in the house,” she recounted yesterday. “When me outside me tell somebody to look if the children safe, and when him go in me see him come out with Shanique a bleed and her tripe (intestines) a drop out.”

The two infants, their bodies riddled with bullets, died in their bed. Up to late morning she still wore the blouse stained with her children’s blood. Surrounded by neighbours, she wept.

“Why they had to kill my pregnant daughter?” Thomas asked between sobs. “The baby in the belly is innocent. It is a wicked act.”

In her room, a blood-soaked sheet sprawled awry over a bloody mattress.

An eyewitness said she was upstairs her house about 4:15 am and heard a noise and saw the area surrounded by gunmen who were kicking off doors at ‘Pound-a-Month’ — a community of about 35 small, wooden houses.

“Me call out to Pound-a-Month people say Tivoli man dem a surround the area,” she said. “Then me run an hide.”

According to this woman, who declined to give her name, the gunmen sang the catchy Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) campaign song for Wednesday’s general elections, “Who you voting for?” They also wrote JLP on the walls.

The residents say that it was mostly women and children who were in the community at the time. The men had gone to a dance in Arnett Gardens to celebrate Davies’ victory in Wednesday’s election.