Rebels overran a key crossroads town and crept closer to the Haitian capital on Friday while looting and violence hit Port-au-Prince. Bands of armed loyalists of embattled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide roamed in trucks and cars through the chaotic capital. A body was seen at a roadside near the Cite Soleil slum, apparently hacked with machetes, and two more were found near the airport, one with hands bound. Crowds of armed men, many wearing masks, blocked dozens of intersections, igniting piles of tires and harassing motorists. Gunfire rang through the sprawling city. The stage was set for a showdown between the ragtag band of former soldiers and gang members trying to unseat Aristide, and the diminutive former priest and one-time populist hero of Haitian democracy backed by an ill-trained, 4,000-member police force and armed supporters from the slums. Aristide, who political opponents have long accused of corruption and political thuggery, again vowed he would not be pushed from office and appealed for help from foreign nations. In Washington, U.S. defense officials said they were considering sending a three-ship group carrying U.S. Marines to Haiti to help deal with the crisis in the Caribbean country of 8 million, the poorest nation in the Americas. The US president George Bush, asked if Aristide should resign, pointed to comments from Secretary of State Colin Powell on Thursday. Powell had said Aristide should "examine his position carefully," indicating U.S. support for him was wavering. **MULTINATIONAL FORCE*** "We're interested in achieving a political settlement and we're still working to that effect. We're also at the same time planning for a multinational force that ... if there needed to be some stability -- that could go in dependent upon a political settlement," Bush said. The United States restored Aristide to office with an invasion in 1994. Rebel leader Guy Philippe, a former police chief accused of plotting coups who returned from exile in the Dominican Republic to join the three-week-old revolt, said his men planned to cut off Port-au-Prince from the ocean. "We going to send some boats ... to block the ships coming from Miami to Port-au-Prince," Philippe told reporters in the country's second-biggest city, Cap Haitien, which the rebels overran last weekend to control a large swath of the north. "All the boats should come and stay in Cap Haitien so starting next week Port-au-Prince will not receive any guns or anything," said Philippe, who has said he wanted to celebrate his 36th birthday on Sunday in the capital. Philippe has said his men have surrounded Port-au-Prince and were awaiting orders to attack. A group of rebels called the "Assaillants" (Attackers) from Haiti's Central Plateau took control of the town of Mirebalais overnight, freeing prisoners from the local jail. Mirebalais is about 30 miles northeast of Port-au-Prince and sits at a junction with access to the capital, the rebel stronghold in the north, the coastal town of Saint Marc and the border with the Dominican Republic, where some of the rebel leaders lived in recent years. Haitian National Police dispatched officers to Les Cayes, Haiti's third-largest city, where they reclaimed a police station taken over by rebels, witnesses in the city said. **PROTECTING THE PALACE*** French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin told a Haitian government delegation in Paris Aristide should quit as part of efforts to end the rebellion, which erupted on Feb. 5 in the northwestern city of Gonaives. The revolt that has killed at least 65 people. Aristide, who has predicted a blood bath if the rebels enter the capital, told CNN by telephone from Port-au-Prince Washington should take a stand for democracy in Haiti. "I think President Bush sent troops to Afghanistan ... Here we want to defend democracy. We have a common ground," Aristide said. Dozens of Aristide supporters stood in the streets around the National Palace, a stately white building surrounded by an iron fence. "I would like to tell Guy Philippe and his band of criminals that Port-au-Prince is not Gonaives or Cap Haitien," said Sony Joseph, an Aristide loyalist surrounded by men with shotguns, pistols and rifles near the palace. "They say they are coming. So we are waiting for them." Looters hit the main port, carrying away goods, while Aristide supporters stripped a warehouse belonging to businessman Smarck Michel, a former prime minister who turned against Aristide, witnesses said. A negotiated end to the crisis seemed far away. This week, Aristide's political foes -- who have distanced themselves from the armed revolt but share its aim of seeing Aristide gone -- rejected power sharing and reiterated demands the president leave the palace. **PHOTO CAPTION*** A boy stands near the bodies of two slain Haitian men in the streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, February 27, 2004. (Daniel Aguilar/Reuters)