OMM Newsroom
El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, said four bodies handed to a special forces mission in Haiti were not those of the Salvadoran personnel the mission was seeking.
A nongovernmental organisation delivered the remains to an airport in Haiti, saying they were four Salvadoran air technicians, according to the BBC. Bukele said one body was that of a child and another was wearing a uniform belonging to a different country’s army.
Bukele sent a military contingent to Haiti on Thursday after the four men went missing in an ambush by “heavily armed criminal groups”. The men were members of the UN-backed Gang Suppression Force (GSF), which is tasked with tackling gang violence in Haiti.
They were travelling in an armoured vehicle back to their camp when they were attacked in Croix-des-Bouquets, an area controlled by armed groups. No gang has claimed responsibility.
Bukele has said the Salvadoran military operation was solely intended to bring the four men back alive. About 450 soldiers had been deployed, the Haitian newspaper Le Nouvelliste reported.
The president said the bodies included a man “considerably greater in height than that of our air technicians” and someone wearing part of a uniform from another country’s army. He also said identification cards and uniforms from other countries were among the remains.
Bukele posted images of an identity card belonging to a GSF member and a corresponding national ID card from Chad.
His comments cast doubt on an earlier New York Times report, citing people close to the Salvadoran mission, that bodies found on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince on Saturday were believed to be those of the missing men.
The newspaper reported that the bodies handed to the military contingent had been badly burned and would need to undergo medical examination for identification. It cited an unnamed source briefed on the situation as saying the ID card posted by Bukele belonged to a soldier who had lost it after being injured.
Haiti has faced years of gang violence, which worsened amid the political vacuum following the assassination of its president in 2021. The multinational force sent to curb the violence and push back armed gangs has struggled to enter areas under their control.
The UN said at the start of October that more than 5,700 people had been killed or injured by gangs or in operations against them between 1 January and 11 September this year.
Bukele said the four GSF members had been in Haiti primarily to “carry out medical evacuations and save lives, not to wage war”.
El Salvador’s armed forces said helicopters were deployed after the men were abducted and several attempts were made to reach the location, but fighting in the area hampered those efforts.
