14 to 15 April 1967 · Haitianspan
A bomb in an ice cream cart is a quarrel inside the family
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Duvalier's sixtieth birthday fell on 14 April 1967, in the tenth year of his rule, and was to be marked with four days of special carnival. The organiser was his son in law Luc Albert Foucard, husband of his daughter Nicole, known in Port-au-Prince as Prince Albert. Foucard's sister was the president's private secretary. The other son in law, Colonel Max Dominique, married to the favourite daughter Marie-Denise and the tallest man ever to graduate from the military academy, was at war with the Foucards, and the president's wife and his son Jean-Claude took Dominique's side. On 15 April, while floats carrying nine beauty queens were towed slowly past the palace, a bomb hidden in a pushcart selling ice cream went off. Four people were killed and forty injured. A second charge went off under a van carrying musicians. The explosives were Dominique's contribution to his rival's festival. The succession was now being fought out inside a crowd.
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