Two Americans injured in attack in Haitian slum

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Two Americans, including a Miami television journalist, were injured Saturday when a group threw rocks at them and shot at their car when they were driving through a Haitian slum.

Connie Hicks, 51, a reporter for Miami's ABC affiliate Channel 10 who was sitting in the front passenger seat, was hit by a rock that fractured her cheekbone. A nurse who was seated in the back was injured by broken glass. Another three Americans in the car were not injured.

They said a group of five men shot out the car's tires and threw rocks, but did not take anything from them. The reason for the attack in the coastal Port-au-Prince slum of Cite Soleil was not clear, and Hicks said the men did not appear to specifically target them because they also attacked a truck ahead of them. The men fled after the attack.

Hicks and cameraman Lenny Yeoman had come to Haiti to film a story on the volunteer work of the three others in the car: nurse Michelle Sidney, doctor Yves Jadesky and Regine Venry - all naturalized U.S. citizens born in Haiti. Jadesky is from Broward County, Florida. The hometowns of the other two were not immediately known.

The five were headed to a clinic and orphanage in Leogane, about 18 miles west of Port-au-Prince, when the attack occurred.

Foreigners are rarely victimized in Haiti, but violent crime has surged in the political tensions leading up the Nov. 26 elections, which former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide is expected to win easily.