El Salvador has sent about 1,000 troops to Haiti after four Salvadoran members of a United Nations-backed security mission went missing in a gang ambush on October 18, a Haitian security official told Reuters.
El Salvador has sent about 1,000 troops to Haiti after four Salvadoran members of a United Nations-backed security mission went missing in a gang ambush on the outskirts of the capital on October 18, a security official in Haiti told Reuters on Tuesday. The troops arrived aboard flights in recent days, dramatically expanding the Central American nation's role in Haiti's long-running gang conflict.
Before the ambush, El Salvador had deployed at least 124 personnel to the force, whom President Nayib Bukele described as pilots and technicians sent to evacuate wounded personnel rather than combatants. It remains unclear who will command the new Salvadoran contingent, how long it will stay, or whether more forces will follow, and neither the Haitian nor the Salvadoran government immediately responded to requests for comment. The United States provided C-130 transport aircraft to help move the troops, a United States military official said, and additional flights between San Salvador and Port-au-Prince were visible on flight-tracking data and reported by the Miami Herald.
The deployment comes as the United Nations-backed Gang Suppression Force has reached about 2,000 personnel, just over a third of its planned strength a year into its mandate, with little improvement in Haiti's security. Armed gangs have expanded their influence over the capital and surrounding regions through extortion and attacks that have displaced nearly 1.5 million people, and Haiti's leaders have sought international security support since 2022, with elections repeatedly delayed since the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise.
The figure of about 1,000 troops comes from a single Haitian security official who spoke on condition of anonymity, and neither government has confirmed it, so the scale of the deployment is reported here as sourced rather than officially confirmed. The earlier figure of at least 124 personnel comes from a United Nations report. Bukele has said the missing men were air force technicians returning to base from a market and that he believed they were being held hostage, while no gang has claimed responsibility and Wilson Joseph, leader of the 400 Mawozo gang, has released videos denying his group is holding them.
The deployment raises the question of how far El Salvador's mission in Haiti extends beyond rescue. Salvadoran security analyst Luis Contreras said he expected at least some of the new troops to operate outside the United Nations-backed mission's chain of command and possibly coordinate with a private military company run by Blackwater founder Erik Prince, which has carried out anti-gang drone operations since 2025. Pierre Esperance, head of Haiti's National Human Rights Defense Network, welcomed the unusually rapid deployment but warned that any operation must avoid harming residents trapped in gang-held neighbourhoods. Whether the four missing men are found, and who commands the new force, are the next facts to watch.