El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele said on Tuesday, November 10, that Salvadoran forces taking part in a joint operation with Haitian police had destroyed the house of Wilson Joseph — known as Lanmò San Jou, leader of Haiti's powerful 400 Mawozo gang — and what he called the gang's headquarters in Croix-des-Bouquets, near Port-au-Prince. Haiti's Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé praised the Salvadoran forces on X, the BBC and AFP reported. The BBC said it could not independently verify Bukele's video footage or establish whether the property was in fact the gang's headquarters.

Source: BBC via Daily VOA

This strike is a major new development after the earlier development Awaaz Punjab reported: Joseph had appealed to the United Nations for mediation and dialogue to prevent further escalation. Days later, instead of talks, his alleged headquarters was struck. Local media reported as many as 20 people were killed in the strike, which they said took place in the early hours of Sunday, November 8; those casualty figures come from unnamed sources and have not been confirmed by Haitian or Salvadoran authorities. The Miami Herald, citing sources with knowledge of the operation, reported the strike was carried out at about 2:30 a.m. on Sunday by a Haitian National Police drone task force backed by Salvadoran soldiers, with helicopter support, and that Joseph was not at the property at the time.

El Salvador's first strike on a Haitian target

The BBC called it El Salvador's first military action against a Haitian target since its large deployment to Haiti began last month. Bukele first said the deployment was meant to bring home four Salvadoran aviation technicians who went missing in an October 18 ambush while serving with the UN-backed Gang Suppression Force (GSF); reports say more than 2,000 Salvadoran personnel have since arrived, and most are operating outside the UN chain of command, El País reported. Bukele posted a 48-second video on X in Haitian Creole — 'We fulfilled our promise' — showing helicopters firing on a large compound as people fled; the video is a produced montage, gives no date or location, and could not be independently geolocated.

Why it matters beyond Haiti

The strike deepens a foreign military role in Haiti's gang war that is already raising coordination and accountability questions: France 24 reported warnings that GSF and Salvadoran soldiers, operating in parallel, could mistake each other for gang members, and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio ruled out an immediate US military deployment in support. The 400 Mawozo gang made global headlines in 2021 for kidnapping 17 North American missionaries. For diaspora readers — including Punjabi and Indian families with relatives in the Caribbean and aid and mission workers in Haiti — the escalation shows a gang crackdown now being fought with foreign helicopters, with civilian-risk questions still unanswered.

The strike follows the gang leader's own appeal for UN mediation, reported earlier by Awaaz Punjab — read that first development here: Read: 400 Mawozo leader appeals to UN for mediation

What happens next

Watch for: any official Haitian or Salvadoran confirmation of casualties and damage; whether the Gang Suppression Force formally coordinates with the Salvadoran deployment; Amnesty International's call for El Salvador to disclose the terms of its Haiti deployment; and any response from Joseph or 400 Mawozo, whose leader was not at the property and remains at large.