Sarkozy regime sends paramilitary police to Guadeloupe

France dispatched hundreds of police reinforcements to its Caribbean island of Guadeloupe on Wednesday as a month-long strike over the rising cost of living descended into deadly riots.

Union representative Jacques Bino, aged in his 50s, was shot dead overnight when he drove up to a roadblock manned by armed youths in Pointe-a-Pitre, the island's main city.

It was not immediately clear who shot him, but he was the first victim of the escalating violence on Guadeloupe, normally a tourist-friendly island but crippled since January 20 by a general strike.

"There were no police nearby," said local prosecutor Jean-Michel Pretre.

Bino's car was hit three times by 12-gauge shotgun slugs. Two rounds hit the rear of the vehicle and the third was fired through a side passenger window and fatally wounded the activist in the chest.

"These were not stray rounds," Pretre said, adding that he was looking into the possibility that, given their age, Bino and a passenger had been mistaken for plain-clothes police officers.

Six members of the security forces were slightly injured during clashes with armed youths, police said. More