"Gather your gangs so we can go fight with them," Bukele wrote in a post on X on Wednesday. In another post, he shared a video he said showed Salvadoran military helicopters opening fire on gangs attacking Gang Suppression Force (GSF) soldiers from Chad. "The gangs no longer have the upper hand," he wrote. In a separate post, Bukele said Salvadoran forces were there to help Haitians free themselves from the gangs. "We are right there beside you," he added.
Haiti's national police posted photos of the burned remains of a truck it said was used by the group, found on Tuesday in the Santo neighbourhood in the Croix-des-Bouquets community outside the capital, Port-au-Prince. Police said they were conducting a joint operation with the UN-backed multinational Gang Suppression Force and Salvadoran troops when they found the vehicles. The area, like much of the capital, has been under the control of gangs.
The four men disappeared on October 18, prompting Bukele, a right-wing leader in office since 2019, to dispatch more than 2,000 troops along with military hardware to Haiti. In El Salvador, Bukele has instituted a harsh crackdown on crime, jailing tens of thousands of people and imposing a state of emergency that rights groups say has suspended many civil rights.
Haiti has been without an elected government since 2021, when its last elected president, Jovenel Moise, was assassinated. Successive transitional governments have tried to impose enough order to hold fresh elections. Last month, the country's nine-member Provisional Electoral Council announced it would delay national elections, pushing the first round of voting from December 13 to July 18, 2027, with a second round scheduled for October 4, 2027. Fewer than one million people have registered so far, out of some 6.5 million Haitians whose identification cards would make them eligible. Gang-controlled roads have made it difficult for officials to reach registration centres, and an international food security assessment released last month said some 5.94 million Haitians are facing acute hunger.
The presence of the troops has raised concerns among some about who is responsible for the use of force. Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for the office of the UN Secretary-General, told reporters in New York that only about 200 of the Salvadoran soldiers fell under the GSF's jurisdiction. "What is important is that any security operation be done within the framework of international human rights law, of international law, and that people's rights need to be respected as you conduct security operations," he said.
Haitian Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aime has assured the public the foreign forces are operating under Haitian authority. "The international forces did not come to replace the state. They came to support it, to reinforce our capacity," he said on Tuesday, speaking alongside the Salvadoran commander in charge of the country's troops as well as Haitian and GSF commanders.
The leader of the gang 400 Mawozo, Wilson Joseph, best known as Lanmo Sanjou, told the Associated Press he had written to the UN Secretary-General asking for an opportunity for dialogue, saying he was concerned about the killing of civilians given the surge in fighting.
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said an uptick in fighting since the disappearance of the Salvadorans was having an impact on civilians in Port-au-Prince, with 30 people, including women and children, injured in the eight days following October 18 by heavy gunfire and drone explosions. The group said the fighting had blocked civilians' access to roads and bridges and made travel to healthcare facilities "extremely risky" for people wounded in the conflict. "We fear that this armed conflict will claim even more victims, and displace even more people in the coming days, particularly with the arrival of additional international security forces," MSF head of mission in Haiti Davina Hayles said in a statement.