Port-au-Prince, Haiti — A Canadian missionary who runs a Haitian orphanage has been kidnapped from his residence near the Caribbean nation's capital, officials said Tuesday.
Ed Hughes, 62, was kidnapped late Monday in Cabaret, a rural town just north of Port-au-Prince where he runs an orphanage, said Michael Lucius, chief of the Haitian Judiciary Police. Radio Metropole reported Hughes disappeared Sunday. Officials could not immediately explain the discrepancy.
Police freed a kidnapped Haitian and arrested four people during a raid in the same town Tuesday, but Lucius said it was unknown whether the suspects had any connection to Hughes' abduction.
U.N. spokeswoman Marie-Evelyn Petrus-Barry said that the organization was working with Haitian police to find Hughes and "liberate him as soon as possible."
A rise in kidnappings and killings in recent weeks has raised fears of a flare-up of violence similar to the mayhem following a 2004 revolt that toppled recently installed President Rene Preval's predecessor, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
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