El Salvador has deployed more than 2,000 soldiers to Haiti in an operation to recover four nationals who went missing in the Caribbean country nearly two weeks ago, in a sharp escalation of tensions between the two nations. President Nayib Bukele communicated the "robust deployment" to Haitian Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aime earlier this week, according to El Salvador's foreign ministry, which said the soldiers would also help with "security efforts against gangs in Haiti."
The four missing men were technicians with the Gang Suppression Force, a UN-backed anti-gang unit, who were ambushed while travelling in an armoured vehicle through an area of Port-au-Prince controlled by armed groups known as Croix-des-Bouquets. No gang has claimed responsibility. Tensions boiled over earlier this week when Haitian authorities handed over two bodies they said belonged to the missing servicemen — but Bukele said the remains did not match: one corpse, he said, was a child's, and the other was dressed in a different country's military uniform.
Bukele had threatened last week, in a post on X, to "wipe out" Haiti's gangs if the Salvadorans were not released, pledging to replicate the hardline anti-gang crackdown he has run at home. The UN Security Council expanded the Gang Suppression Force's powers a year ago to tackle Haiti's worsening violence, but the multinational force has struggled to penetrate gang-held territory; more than 5,700 people have been killed in gang-related violence in Haiti this year alone, according to the UN, with armed groups still controlling much of the capital more than five years after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse plunged the country into a political vacuum.