Republished March 27, 2019 - 3:13 PM
Original Publication Date March 27, 2019 - 2:06 PM
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Gunmen attacked a motorcade carrying Chile's ambassador to Haiti on Wednesday, wounding his driver and another person and leaving three missing, officials said. The ambassador was not harmed.
The Santiago, Chile-based charity America Solidaria said in a written statement Wednesday that gunmen opened fire as Ambassador Patricio Utreras and his wife were driving to a clean-water project in the Haitian capital's Croix-des-Bouquets area with Haitian infrastructure officials and 13 of the charity's volunteers from Colombia, Chile, Mexico and Haiti.
Chile's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said four members of the Chilean Investigative Police, the country's equivalent of the FBI, repelled the attack and quickly pulled the ambassador and his wife, who was also in the convoy, from the area.
The ambassador's driver was hit by a bullet in the wrist and an America Solidaria official was also lightly wounded. The local mayor said the ambassador's car was hit by many bullets.
America Solidaria said Frantz Eliantzin, a Haitian driver for the charity; Abner Cejuste, an official with Haiti's water authority; and Andy Blaise, an engineer with Proyecto Universal, a Chile-based aid group; were all missing after the attack. No details were provided.
America Solidaria said the attack occurred during a visit to Project Wash, a project providing clean water and sanitation to Boutin, an extremely poor section of Croix-des-Bouquets, an area populated by tens of thousands of people displaced by Haiti's 2010 earthquake.
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Weissenstein contributed from Havana.
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Michael Weissenstein on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mweissenstein
News from © The Associated Press, 2019