Four bodies recently delivered to El Salvador’s military contingent in Haiti have been confirmed by President Nayib Bukele not to belong to the missing Salvadoran hostages, who vanished in an ambush last week.
The bodies were handed over by a nongovernmental organization at an airport in Haiti. President Bukele stated that one corpse was that of a child and another was dressed in the uniform of a foreign army, which led to doubts about the identities of the remains. “The man is of considerably greater height than that of our air technicians,” he added.
The four missing individuals were part of the UN-backed Gang Suppression Force (GSF) aimed at addressing escalating gang violence in Haiti. They were attacked while returning to their camp in an armored vehicle in Croix-des-Bouquets, an area notorious for gang control. As of now, no gang has claimed responsibility for the ambush.
Bukele initiated a military operation to recover the hostages, deploying approximately 450 soldiers to Haiti. He emphasized that the mission’s primary goal was to bring the four men back alive. “They were there to carry out medical evacuations and save lives, not to wage war,” he noted.
Reports indicated that the bodies recovered were in poor condition, prompting the need for medical examinations for positive identification. Earlier reports suggested the remains might belong to the missing men, a notion rejected by Bukele and met with skepticism, particularly regarding a report from the New York Times. The president shared evidence that included identification cards from GSF members, specifically citing a card belonging to a soldier from Chad, Africa.
According to the United Nations, gang violence in Haiti has drastically escalated since the political instability that followed the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021. A UN report from early October detailed that over 5,700 people had been killed or injured in gang-related incidents from January 1 to September 11 of this year.
The Salvadoran armed forces have faced significant challenges during their recovery efforts due to ongoing violence in the area where the hostages were taken. Helicopters were deployed, and multiple attempts to reach the location of the ambush were complicated by fighting.
