PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) – Supporters demanding the return of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide hurled stones and fired shots in the air on Saturday, the third straight day of violent protests that have killed 12 people so far.

At least five men were killed Friday by gunmen outside the home of an anti-Aristide community leader in the seaside slum Village de Dieu, residents said Saturday. Radio Metropole reported one civilian shot dead in a pro-Aristide demonstration Friday, while Justice Minister Bernard Gousse said police had killed two gang leaders Thursday in fighting in Cite Soleil, a seaside slum teeming with Aristide loyalists.

The headless bodies of three police officers turned up Friday. They, along with a fourth policeman, were killed in clashes Thursday in the capital Port-Au-Prince, police said.

“Aristide’s partisans have begun an urban guerrilla operation that they call Operation Baghdad,” human rights activist Jean-Claude Bajeux said Saturday. “The decapitations are imitative of those in Iraq, and they are meant to show the failure of U.S. policy in Haiti.”

Aristide’s Lavalas Family party on Thursday began three days of commemoration of the 1991 coup that toppled Aristide’s first government. They are demanding an end to the “occupation” by foreign troops – referring to the U.S.-led force that followed Aristide’s February ouster and U.N. peacekeepers who have taken over since June.

Aristide, now in exile in South Africa, has accused U.S. agents of kidnapping him when he was flown out of Haiti on a U.S.-chartered jet amid a bloody rebellion. But the U.S. government insists Aristide left of his own free will.