KINGSTON, Jamaica – Jamaican police say at least 73 people have died as security force hunt for a reputed drug lord wanted by the United States. Deputy Police Chief Glenmore Hinds says all the deaths have occurred as police raided the Tivoli Gardens stronghold of Christopher Coke. Officials previously said that 44 civilians had died.
Information Minister Daryl Vaz said yesterday that officials are trying to identify the victims and that the government will launch independent investigations into all police actions.
Vas has said it is unclear whether Coke is still in Jamaica.
The U.S. is seeking his extradition and called him one of the world’s most dangerous drug traffickers.
Slum dwellers seethed with anger yesterday at the security forces waging a house-to-house search for the  powerful druglord, as the death toll rose in the country’s  wave of violence without any sign of the operation’s target.
Police said that 73 bodies have been found in morgues, some in a state of decomposition, although several may not have died in the operation. Three security personnel have died in the four-day-old operation.
Heaps of sometimes smoldering garbage littered streets of western Kingston,  a world away from Jamaica’s world-famous beaches and the stronghold of gangster Coke.
Outside one ramshackle apartment, a woman who said she been inside for two days pushed with a rake the decomposing body of a cat she found at her doorstep. Residents spoke of heavy gunfire in recent days.
“What we need is money and food,” said a middle-aged woman named Marlene. “Coke, he take care the community. Not the soldiers, they just shoot.”
Jamaican security forces escorted a group of journalists into Tivoli Gardens — even in peacetime notorious for its violence. But residents poured open scorn on the troops, amassing at one point to chant, “We want justice!”
One woman grew angry when asked by a foreigner about the ultimate question on security forces’ mind — the whereabouts of Coke.
“You want Mr. Coke, you go find Mr. Coke! Not for we here to find Mr. Coke!”
Government officials have refused to discuss Coke’s whereabouts, with rumors swirling in Jamaica that he may have escaped the dragnet.
“Our best information is that he was not arrested. His whereabouts we cannot tell you,” Glenroy Hinds, Deputy Commissioner of Police, told a news conference.
US prosecutors accuse Coke and his “Shower Posse” of funneling cocaine and marijuana to New York and other eastern US cities, contributing to violence that has caused thousands of deaths in both countries.
But many poor Jamaicans look to Coke as a hero who provides a semblance of protection on some of the world’s most dangerous streets, along with small-time jobs and education.
Walls were covered with artwork depicting Coke’s father and don predecessor, Jim Brown, who died in a mysterious fire at a police jail in 1991.
One portrait read “Jim Brown: One Man Against the World,” next to images of other revered figures including reggae superstar Bob Marley and Ethiopia’s late emperor Haile Selaissie I, a demigod in the Rastafarian faith.
The relationships between the gangsters and government are complicated.
At election time, Coke had mobilized in for Prime Minister Bruce Golding’s Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), while other dons have supported the opposition.
Golding, who represents Tivoli Gardens in parliament, declared a state of emergency on Sunday after months of hesitation, vowing both to capture Coke and to battle Jamaica’s scourge of crime.
Despite the anger in the slums, the operation has enjoyed support among many wealthier Jamaicans and much of the mainstream media which have rejoiced at a chance to break the island’s long relationship between crime and politics.
The United States has strongly supported the operation and provided bulletproof vests to Jamaican security forces, concerned about the island’s role as a conduit for drugs.