Four bodies handed over to Salvadoran forces in Haiti on Saturday do not belong to the four Salvadoran soldiers ambushed a week earlier outside Port-au-Prince, El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele said, directly contradicting a report in The New York Times.
Source: Reuters
"They are not our men," Bukele said in a post on X, hours after the Times reported that bodies believed to be those of the missing soldiers had been found outside the Haitian capital.
The Times, citing two people close to the security mission, had reported that the remains were recovered on Saturday, were badly burned, and were handed over at the international airport to a Salvadoran military team that had flown into Haiti on Friday. Reuters said it could not immediately confirm that report, and the international security mission declined to comment.
Source: Reuters / New York Times
Bukele said the four bodies handed over included a child, a man much taller than the Salvadoran soldiers, and a soldier from another country, and he shared photos of a soldier's identification from Chad. Awaaz Punjab is not naming or identifying any of the dead.
What is solid
- Four bodies were handed over to Salvadoran forces at the airport in Port-au-Prince on Saturday.
- President Bukele says the bodies are not the four missing Salvadoran soldiers, so the four remain missing.
What is only claimed
- The New York Times reported the bodies were believed to be the ambushed soldiers; Bukele says they are not, and Reuters could not immediately confirm the Times report.
The ambush and the search
The four soldiers went missing last Sunday after they jumped from a burning armoured vehicle that came under attack on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince while they were returning from a market to their base, Salvadoran officials said earlier this week. The ambush was the first major attack on the Gang Suppression Force, the United Nations-authorized multinational mission, since it began operations in Haiti this year.
Earlier this week Bukele said gangs were holding the four men and that El Salvador had launched a military operation to bring them back unharmed, with additional Salvadoran troops deployed to support search and security operations.
No group has publicly claimed responsibility for the attack. Local media have linked the ambush to gangs operating in the area, including the armed groups Chen Mechan and 400 Mawozo — a link that has not been officially confirmed.
A year into its mandate, the Gang Suppression Force has about 2,000 troops on the ground, well below its authorized ceiling of 5,500, and an earlier Kenyan-led security effort struggled with chronic shortages of money, equipment and personnel. Haiti's gangs have expanded sharply since the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise, taking control of large parts of Port-au-Prince and displacing 1.4 million to 1.5 million people.