PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) – Brazilian peacekeepers forced their way into a compound seized by former soldiers who ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and said they had reached an agreement for the rebels to leave the premises unarmed.

The U.N. troops detonated an explosive device as a warning before entering Aristide’s plundered former estate, said Col. Carlos Barcellos, the commander of the Brazilian peacekeeping force. He said the ex-soldiers put up no resistance, and nobody was injured in the blast.

After meeting with U.N. troops, the ex-soldiers agreed to lay down their weapons and will be taken to a police academy near Aristide’s abandoned estate in suburban Tabarre, Barcellos said.

“They have agreed to lay down their weapons,” he said. “We are taking them to the police academy in Haiti.”

The former soldiers, who led a three-week rebellion that forced Aristide to flee in February, took over the estate on Wednesday, saying they would make it a new army base and repeating demands that the interim government reinstate the army.

The road leading to the state-owned compound in suburban Tabarre had been blocked off with U.N. armored vehicles, and more than 100 U.N. peacekeepers and Haitian police officers were on standby.

The rebels include members of the army which first ousted Aristide in 1991 as well as convicted criminals and others accused of killings, rapes and torture under the 1991-1994 military regime.

Aristide disbanded the army after a U.S. intervention restored him to power in 1994.

The ex-soldiers say they want to play a law-enforcement role in Haiti, whose ill-equipped police force of 4,000 is unable to provide security for the 8 million citizens.

Former soldiers remain in control of vast tracts of Haiti’s countryside, despite the presence of peacekeepers.

Tensions have grown since Sept. 30, when Aristide supporters stepped up demands that the ousted leader return from exile in South Africa. More than 100 people have been killed since in clashes and summary executions.

The latest was the third confrontation between U.N. troops and former Haitian soldiers in less than three months. None resulted in violence.