Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has sent at least 200 special forces troops to Haiti to join the search for four missing Salvadoran soldiers, according to an individual with knowledge of the deployment, and threatened to escalate attacks on the country’s heavily armed gangs if they aren’t returned alive.
The missing aviation technicians, part of the U.N.-approved, U.S.-supported Gang Suppression Force, were ambushed by armed criminals Sunday in gang-controlled Croix-des-Bouquets. They are believed to have been kidnapped.
“A contingent from El Salvador has arrived in Port-au-Prince to support ongoing search and security operations in Plaine du Cul-de-Sac,” the Gang Suppression Force said Thursday. “The Force continues its operations in the area in close coordination with the Haitian National Police and relevant operational partners.”
One hundred Salvadoran special forces troops arrived in Port-au-Prince Thursday morning and were preparing for the search, according to the individual with knowledge of the deployment, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to describe it publicly. A second group of 100 arrived overnight.
The four technicians with El Salvador’s Liberty II Task Force were returning to their camp Sunday in a white all-terrain Toyota when they were ambushed by heavily armed criminals, according to the Salvadoran military. The assailants used firearms and explosives, igniting the vehicle.
The technicians managed to escape the vehicle but fell out of contact and haven’t been heard from since. It was the worst attack on the Gang Suppression Force since it began deploying this year.
The Gang Suppression Force and Haitian National Police operations on Wednesday were particularly intense, the individual said. The joint forces set several houses ablaze and killed several gang members. One of the houses reportedly belonged to Chen Mechan, or Mad Dog, the gang accused of launching the attack on the technicians.
Bukele, whose war on gangs in El Salvador have won him praise and criticism, addressed himself Wednesday “to the gang leaders and gang members holding our four compatriots hostage.”
“Today’s attack is nothing compared with what is coming if you do not return all four hostages alive,” he wrote on X in Haitian Creole. “Return our four compatriots to us alive and unharmed, and everything will return to the way it was before.”
Analysts questioned how Salvadoran special forces will work with the existing international and national forces.
“When a country like El Salvador [is] contributing troops to the GSF deploys units in parallel, it is fair to ask whether multilateral and national frameworks are beginning to overlap, and how coordination will be ensured,” said Romain Le Cour, who heads the Haiti Observatory at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.
The Gang Suppression Force, staffed largely by African and Latin American troops with support and funding from the United States and others, deployed this year to help outgunned Haitian authorities establish enough security to allow elections.
The presidency in this Caribbean nation of 12 million has been vacant since the 2021 assassination of Jovenel Moïse. The National Assembly closed after the last senators’ terms expired in 2023.
In their absence, heavily armed gangs have taken control of 90 percent of Port-au-Prince, the capital, and are spreading into the countryside, according to the U.N. Mission in Haiti.
Gangs such as Chen Mechan and 400 Mawozo make money through kidnapping and draw weapons from national supplies in Haiti and the neighboring Dominican Republic and purchases in the United States. 400 Mawozo leader Joseph “Lanmò San Jou” Wilson posted a video Thursday showing multiple containers filled with rifle ammunition.
“What I know is man can never be afraid,” he said. “We have nowhere to go. If we have to fight to stay alive, we will fight to stay alive.”
At least 5,700 people in Haiti were killed or injured by gangs or during operations against them this year through Sept. 11, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk reported this month. More than 230 people were kidnapped and more than 1,000 females were raped.
Türk, speaking before the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva on Oct. 2, said the actual toll was probably much higher.
“If bandits continue to have guns and ammunition, we will not get out of this situation,” said attorney Marie Rosy Kesner Auguste Ducena, program manager with Haiti’s National Human Rights Defense Network.
The Gang Suppression Force replaced the Multinational Security Support Mission in April. It has been authorized at 5,500 troops with more aggressive rules of engagement than its predecessor.
Bukele said the Salvadoran contribution to the force “consists only of pilots and technical personnel.”
“Our kidnapped men are not combatants,” he said. Their “primary job,” he added, “is to carry out medical evacuations and save lives, not to wage war.
It’s unclear how the technicians found themselves in a gang-controlled area without support. Bukele said they were “kidnapped in a cowardly manner while returning after buying food at a market.”
In El Salvador, Bukele’s mass arrests and incarceration of gang members have made him Latin America’s most popular leader and drawn condemnation from rights monitors.
“Do not take our words for empty threats,” he warned in his post. “We have already finished with the gangs in El Salvador, and we can finish with you, too.”
Le Cour said the technicians’ disappearance underscores the challenges that confront security forces in Haiti.
“Operating in the heart of gang territory is a formidable test that the security forces do not appear able to meet in full,” he said. “Beyond training and coordination, the core gap is intelligence: the lack of reliable information, and of the means to protect and share it securely.
“That gap weighs most in a crisis like this one.”
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