New Orleans asks for National Guard after murders

NEW ORLEANS - New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has asked for National Guard troops and state police to patrol the city and help quell rising violence after five teenagers were murdered over the weekend.

The mayor and city council members held a special meeting in the wake of the predawn shooting of five young men on Saturday in one of the most deadly attacks in the history of the city.

New Orleans is still recovering from Hurricane Katrina, which hit last August 29, and after a pre-storm respite, crime is up.

"We are not going... to let hurricane crime replace Hurricane Katrina," City Council President Oliver Thomas said in televised remarks as mothers of victims of the Saturday shootings stood nearby.

Nagin said he would ask Governor Kathleen Blanco for the troops, local television stations WWL and WVUE said on their websites.

Nagin wants 300 National Guardsmen and 60 state troopers to reinforce police, WWL said.

A 16-year-old, a 17-year-old and three 19-year-olds were found shortly before dawn on Saturday in and near a sport utility vehicle surrounded by semi-automatic handgun shell casings, police said. Four were dead on the spot and the fifth died shortly thereafter.

The weekend shooting raised the number of murders to 52 so far this year, police said, and residents and local media have said they feel crime is accelerating.

The number of murders is less than half that a year ago, but the city's population is only about half what it was before the storm and killings have accelerated in the last two months, according to police statistics.

New Orleans was once one of the most dangerous cities in the United States, but the level of violence dropped sharply in following the evacuation of the city in the wake of Katrina. The storm killed more than 1,500 and drove hundreds of thousands from their homes.

"If we don't have wind knocking us down, we have shooters knocking us down, and that's unacceptable," WWL quoted Thomas as saying.

- REUTERS