Half a million people poured joyously into the streets of the Haitian capital yesterday after electing as President by a landslide a radical Roman Catholic priest.

All unofficial news of the results was banned to avoid disorder and Haitians had to tune in to foreign radio and television stations to hear that international election observers estimated their hero, Father Jean Bertrand Aristide, aged 37, was scoring about 70 per cent of the vote. Official results were still unavailable, but the US quickly congratulated Father Aristide. Bernard Aaronson, US Under-Secretary of State for Inter-American affairs, said. ‘We congratulated him on his victory and told him the US would support the democratic process in Haiti.’

Lorry-loads of police moved to control the crowds of slum dwellers in Latin America’s poorest country as they surged past the presidential palace, dancing and singing. A pregnant woman was shot dead when police opened fire in front of a church. Her husband said they fired two shots into her at close range after she fell, then drove their pickup truck over her body. An opposition alliance led by a former World Bank official, Marc Bazin, said it would ask for the vote in Haiti’s most populous region to be declared void. ‘There was no systematic vote count,’ Mr Bazin’s spokesman, Claude Roumain, said. ‘They counted the votes in the middle of the street. It was chaos.’

Some of the demonstrators crowed like cockerels, the election symbol of the tiny, bespectacled Father Aristide , who calls Haiti ‘a prison’ and says that, like Christ, he is ready to die for its deliverance.

If Father Aristide has, as expected, scored about 70 per cent of the vote, he would avoid a run-off election next month, which many believe would have given his opponents in the army and business community time to block legally his accession to the presidency next February 7, the fifth anniversary of the fall of the 28-year Duvalier family dictatorship.

They may still try to do so by other means, despite his recent dropping of revolutionary rhetoric. ‘If they don’t let him be President, we’ll destroy the country. He’s the only one who understands our problems,’ said one resident of Cite Soleil, a cardboard city on the edge of the capital.

‘This is the third independence of Haiti,’ he shouted. ‘First we got rid of the French in 1804, then the Duvaliers, and now we’re ready to die for Aristide .’

The crowds triumphantly held aloft red blossoms from the bougainvillea trees at the church where Duvalierist thugs massacred a dozen people during one of his services two years ago. They also converged on the orphanage for street boys which the charismatic priest, a biblical scholar who speaks six languages, runs and where he usually lives.

Father Aristide’s activism won him the opprobrium of his superiors and the Salesian Order expelled him in 1988. He now wears lay clothes, but he remains a priest.

Haiti’s new military rulers appeared alone in the world yesterday, condemned for overthrowing the country’s first freely elected president, Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

The United States began exerting pressure to reverse the coup, after helping to arrange Fr Aristide ‘s safe passage into exile.

From Venezuela, where he is staying for the moment, Fr Aristide vowed to return home and restore democracy: ‘There is a general who is trying to rob the people of democratic power and I am sure that with the support of the international community . . . we can overthrow him.’

General Raoul Cedras, the army commander who heads the new three-man military junta, was a ‘power hungry slaughterer’, Fr Aristide added in a French radio interview.

Washington refused to recognise the new regime and announced suspension of all economic and military aid, amounting to more than Dollars 80 million ( pounds 46 million).

The Organisation of American States demanded Fr Aristide ‘s return to power, as did France, which cut off Dollars 38 million in aid. The European Community threatened to suspend Dollars 150 million worth of aid.

Sporadic shooting continued in the capital, Port-au-Prince, whose streets were heavily patrolled by troops. A night curfew was imposed.

The official death toll since the coup on Sunday night was around 30, but hospital officials put it at more than 100. ‘We’ll never know the real figure because most of the bodies never reach the hospital,’ said one.

Fr Aristide arrived in Caracas yesterday morning on the personal jet of the Venezuelan president, Carlos Andreas Perez. He was staying at the French embassy while considering whether to stay in the region or take up an offer of asylum by France. Today he is due in Washington for an emergency OAS ministerial meeting on the coup.

Fr Aristide , aged 38, left Haiti with five relatives and his former police chief. Three members of his cabinet were arrested - the prime minister, Rene Preval, and the ministers of information and planning. Others were reported to be seeking asylum in foreign embassies.

Roger Lafontant, who briefly seized power last January in a bid to stop Fr Aristide , then president-elect, from taking office, meanwhile escaped from the national prison.

Gen Cedras, aged 42, earlier appealed to citizens in a broadcast to help restore calm so that new elections could be held at an unspecified date. He said the army had been forced to take over ‘to keep the ship of state afloat’. He added: ‘After seven months of democracy the country is once again in the grip of the horror of uncertainty.’

He said the army, which he called an ‘apolitical body’, would guarantee freedom. It would not tolerate looting or the practice of murder by ‘necklacing’.

The two other members of the new junta are the deputy army chief, Colonel Alix Sylva, and Colonel Henri Robert Marc Charles, a hardliner.

Anger is growing in Haiti and there are fears of more violence on the streets of the capital Port-au-Prince today as thousands are expected to turn out for a protest march against the toppling of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

After a week of anarchy following Aristide’s resignation and departure, armed gangs that support the former leader have continued their shooting and looting sprees, while the rebels who fought to depose him have been parading around the city.

Now the warring factions are being quelled by the presence of more than 2,000 international troops, mostly US marines, who patrol the streets of the capital in armoured vehicles. But in much of the country no one really knows who is in control.

US marines and French troops dispatched to Port-au-Prince were slow to react to the power vacuum, spending their first three days quartered at the international airport. They began tentative patrols on the streets on Wednesday and, although the explosive violence has abated, revenge killings have continued.

‘I would warn those who see the relative calm in many parts of the country as a sign that law and order has been restored that this is far from so,’ said Jan Egeland, the UN’s emergency relief coordinator. ‘Beyond the capital, there is a security vacuum.’

On Thursday, US Special Forces were dispatched to the northern cities of Gonaives and Cap-Haitien, strongholds of rebels led by former army officers, to assess the security situation.

In Port-au-Prince the marines, accompanied by French, Canadian and Chilean troops, have received a mixed reception. Some Haitians were happy to see the GIs back on the streets; others blame them for driving their President from power.

In a show of support for Aristide, thousands marched on the National Palace, where marines stand guard, on Friday, shouting for the Americans to go away and to bring back their President.

The anger contrasted with the cheers of ‘Freedom!’ on Monday, when armed rebels marched into the capital from the north of the country.

With thousands of cheering supporters in tow, rebel leader Guy Philippe arrived at National Police headquarters next to the presidential palace, then watched as his supporters looted an art museum.

Philippe agreed to stand down and urged rebels to lay down their arms, but he remained in Port-au-Prince and there was little evidence the rebels planned to comply.

The rebels are hoping to play a role in the future of Haiti and want the army reconstituted, but the United States has made it clear that it does not want to see leaders of the insurrection in any position of power.

Throughout the upheaval, political leaders have been trying to work out who will run the country next. A seven-member council of ‘wise men’ was named yesterday to nominate a new prime minister to be appointed by the interim President, Boniface Alexandre.