MURDERS in Jamaica moved past the 1,650 mark yesterday, with the police reporting at least 11 killings between Tuesday and Wednesday, building on the dubious status of 2005 as the record year for homicides in Jamaica, and reinforcing the country’s reputation as the murder capital of the world.

Yesterday’s murder victim was Andrew Love, a taxi driver of Albion St James, who was shot dead on Montego Bay’s King Street.

According to the police, Love stopped to let a passenger at about 4:15 yesterday morning, when his vehicle was blocked by another car. A gunman jumped up of the car and opened fired on Love, who was pronounced dead at the Cornwall Regional Hospital.

Love’s death brought the unofficial murder figure to 1,651. With three days to the end of the year, that figure represents 180 or 12 per cent more homicides than for all of 2004.

That figure gives Jamaica a murder rate of over 63 per 100,000 population, giving the island, the experts say, a higher murder rate than homicides-wracked such as South Africa and Colombia.

Most killings in Jamaica take place in depressed urban communities, where gangs, sometimes with residual connection to political parties, fight each other for turf, control of extortion rackets and general influence.

At least one of two murders reported in the capital on Tuesday night was believed by the police to be linked to such a fight for influence in the Arnett Gardens/Jones Town area of South St Andrew. These are poverty-stricken communities in South St Andrew where cops detained three so-called area leaders on Tuesday: brothers George and Andrew Phang, and Patrick Roberts, the CEO, of Shocking Vibes Records, a recording and artiste management outfit. The trio was held by the police on suspicion of being involved in murder conspiracies.

Scores of people have died in South St Andrew over the past 18 months in an apparent tussle for community leadership, where aging area ‘don’ George Phang, appeared to have been losing his grip. Roberts, an influential community figure who contested the 2002 general for the ruling People’s National Party, is the president of the Arnett Gardens Football Club, a post in which he succeeded George Phang, who has held sway in the community since the 1970s.

It is this convoluted rivalry of personalities, street politics, gangs and political influence, which police believe spilled onto Half Way Tree Road at about 11:20 Tuesday night when Jermaine Forrester, 21, of the Mexico area of Jones Town, was shot dead.

According to the police, Forrester was walking in a group of men, when a motor car drove up. Men in the car opened fire on Forrester before the vehicle drove off.

“We believe that the war over turf in the Mexico area of Jones Town is the reason why the man is dead,” a police investigator told the Observer. “Preliminary investigation suggests that his killing is actually gang related.”

Many of Jamaica’s murders are characterised by the police as domestic violence, meaning that the victim and the perpetrator knew each other and the homicide resulted from a dispute – which appeared to be the case of the death of Solomon Singh, 20, in Hayes Clarendon on Tuesday. Keith Johnson, 54, of Top Hill, Clarendon has been arrested for murder in that incident.

According to the police, both men were in a dispute when Singh was stabbed with a knife.