Haitian President Mr Jean-Bertrand Aristide is facing his most serious challenge in months of anti-government protests as an armed revolt spreads to more cities in the Caribbean nation.
Hundreds of looters stripped sea containers in the port of Saint Marc of televisions, radios and corn flour, and they set the empty containers ablaze a day after outnumbered police were forced to flee armed gangs.
Barricades were thrown up overnight in the slums and streets of Saint Marc, the largest town on the road north from the capital to the country's fourth-largest city, Gonaives, where police tried unsuccessfully on Saturday to restore control after being driven out two days earlier.
Youth gangs, many of whose members carried handguns tucked under their T-shirts, controlled all travel routes to and from Gonaives. Cars could not pass the barricades made of vehicles, felled trees, boulders and smouldering garbage.
In addition to the uprising in Saint Marc, police headquarters were attacked in the cities of Trou de Nord, Listere and Grand Goave, independent Radio Metropole said.
Mr Aristide, a former Roman Catholic priest once hailed as a champion of the country's fledgling democracy but now accused by opponents of corruption and political thuggery, is under pressure to resign halfway through his second term as the poorest country in the Americas spirals into mayhem and bloodshed.
The revolt has come on top of months of sometimes violent anti-Aristide demonstrations in Port-au-Prince and other cities in Haiti, a country of 8 million people that has suffered repeated civil wars, dictatorships, and two US invastions.