25261: Wharram - news - French consul killed in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

>From Bruce Wharram <bruce.wharram@sev.org>


WORLD
French consul killed in Haiti

Wednesday, June 1, 2005 Posted: 12:45 PM EDT (1645 GMT)


PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) -- Gunmen killed the honorary French consul to
the northern city of Cap-Haitien while he was driving in Haiti's capital,
amid growing insecurity in the hemisphere's poorest country, the French
Embassy said Wednesday.

Paul-Henri Mourral was driving Tuesday on Haiti's main north-south highway
connecting Port-au-Prince and Cap-Haitien when a group of armed men shot
him, pulled him out of his vehicle and stole it, said Eric Bosc, a French
Embassy spokesman.

A few minutes later, an International Committee of the Red Cross ambulance
rushed Mourral to a hospital, Bosc said. Doctors operated on him, removing
some of the bullets and giving him blood transfusions, but he died late
Tuesday.

"He was critically wounded when he arrived at the hospital," Bosc said. "We
are still not sure how many bullets hit him. There were many."

Mourral, 53, represented the commercial interests of the French community in
Cap-Haitien, Bosc said. Mourral was born in Paris but had lived many years
in Haiti. He was married to a Haitian woman and had two children who are
university students in France.

It wasn't clear if Mourral's body would be repatriated to France, Bosc said.

France asked the Haitian government to "put everything in place to identify
and judge the authors of this assassination," Foreign Ministry spokesman
Jean-Baptiste Mattei said in a statement Wednesday.

Bosc said embassy officials didn't have a motive for the attack. Haitian
police and government officials did not immediately return telephone calls
seeking comment.

The shooting came less than a week after the U.S. government issued a travel
warning to American citizens and ordered the departure of nonessential
embassy employees and their relatives.

"Visitors and residents must remain vigilant due to the absence of an
effective police force ... and the possibility of random violent crime
including kidnapping, carjacking and assault," the warning says.

The French government issued a travel warning Monday to tourists and
businessmen, citing an upsurge of carjackings and kidnappings, said Bosc,
but did not order families from the French diplomatic corps to leave the
country.

One day before the U.S. travel warning, gunmen opened fire on a U.S. Embassy
vehicle in the capital, but the U.S. government said the incident did not
prompt the warning and that it was issued because of the deteriorating
security situation in the Caribbean country of 8 million.

Haitian police and a 7,400-member U.N. peacekeeping force have struggled to
control violence since the February 2004 rebellion that ousted President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Human rights group estimate more than 700 people have been killed --
including 40 police officers -- in Port-au-Prince since September when
Aristide loyalists called for increased protests to demand his return from
exile in South Africa.

On Tuesday, a fire ripped through a popular market in downtown
Port-au-Prince a few minutes after armed men opened fire. At least one
person was shot and killed, but witnesses and survivors said they believed
many more people were trapped inside.

U.N. peacekeepers cordoned off the area late Tuesday and helped people
evacuate while Haitian fire trucks sprayed water on the blaze. But despite
repeated requests, U.N. officials said Wednesday they were not able to
provide estimates of dead or wounded.