POLICE yesterday shot two men dead during what officers said was a late morning gunbattle with gunmen in Denham Town, a tough community in the capital city’s west end. The names of the dead were not ascertained, and it was not clear last night if they were among those who allegedly engaged the cops in the exchange of gunfire.

Hours after the gunbattle, gunmen shot dead two men and injured another two in ‘Angola’ in the volatile area of Arnett Gardens in South St Andrew, in what was believed to be an unrelated incident. But police believed that armed men in the Arnett incident struck after members of the security forces left the community to help restore order in Denham Town.

The trouble in Denham Town, according to the police, started when members of a joint police/military patrol entered premises in Denham Town where a group of men had gathered.

“A brown man with a low-cut hairstyle opened fire as we entered the yard. We returned the fire and all of a sudden all hell broke loose,” Special Sergeant Steven Watson told the Observer. “About 15 men with AK47 rifles pinned us down for over an hour.”

During the alleged shoot-out, two men were shot dead and two guns – a 9mm pistol and an AK47 rifle – were seized, police said. The two were not identified.

Police sources said the gunmen were preparing for an offensive against the security forces to commemorate the anniversary of the fatal shooting of influential Tivoli Gardens resident, 42-year-old Donovan ‘Zion Train’ Griffiths.

Griffiths was killed during a confrontation with the police in Denham Town on April 19 last year. It is widely believed that the murders of three policemen and a security guard – killed hours apart, a few days after Zion Train’s death – were committed in reprisal.

Yesterday, several streets in Denham Town and Tivoli Gardens were blocked as residents hit out at what they claimed was the brutal treatment being meted out to them by the police.

One female resident of Denham Town identified one of the policemen whom she claimed was harassing residents. .”Him need fi come offa we back,” the woman said.

In the meantime, Opposition Leader Bruce Golding, the MP for West Kingston, at a hastily-called press conference at the Tivoli Gardens Community Centre urged Police Commissioner Lucius Thomas to personally take charge of policing in his constituency.

Golding said, however, he did not expect Thomas to be on the ground in the community.

In Arnett Gardens, not far from Denham Town, terrified residents from a section of the area known as Angola said a gang of gunmen armed with AK47 rifles kicked down doors to more than a dozen houses and fired their weapons wildly.

They shot dead 26-year-old Delroy Mitchell and Conroy Campbell, 25, and injured two other men in the rampage.

All this happened when a group of police officers who were posted at Collie Smith Drive in Arnett Gardens, as a buffer between warring factions, reacted to their colleagues’ call for help in Denham Town and left their posts.

“We are not the aggressors. Dem know say the policeman dem leave the area and run in pan we. If we did have big gun over here dem wouldn’t get a free run,” one resident said.

Mitchell’s body was covered with a sheet, but Campbell lay in a pool of blood with gunshot wounds to the back of his head. At least 40 AK47 spent shells were found at the scene.

The double murder came just days after the gun murder of 14-year-old Kenesha Wellington in Angola.

The police believe the attackers in yesterday’s shootings were members of gangs based in the Mexico, Pegasus, Top Jungle and Jones Town communities who are at loggerheads with rivals from Angola and another section of the community known as Zimbabwe.

“This is a long-time war and as soon as the police left the area they started again. We will be looking out for any reprisal attacks later,” a cop said yesterday.

Staff at Trench Town Comprehensive and Charlie Smith Comprehensive high schools locked their students in classrooms during the gunfire.