Haiti news took a new turn when Nayib Bukele said four bodies handed over in Haiti were not the missing Salvadoran men his mission had been sent to recover. The Salvadoran president said the remains had reached one of Haiti's airports, but his account left the fate of the four men unresolved.
Bukele said the operation's sole purpose was to return the four men alive, and he described them as part of the Gang Suppression Force. He said a nongovernmental organisation delivered the human remains and claimed they were four El Salvadoran air technicians.
El Salvador and Haiti
Bukele dispatched a military contingent on Thursday after the four men vanished following an ambush by heavily armed criminal groups. The men had been travelling back to their camp in an armoured vehicle when they were attacked in Croix-des-Bouquets, and the Salvadoran armed forces said helicopters were deployed and multiple attempts were made to reach the location when the men were abducted. The armed forces said those efforts were hampered by fighting in the area.
Le Nouvelliste said approximately 450 soldiers had been deployed, while Bukele said the four GSF members had primarily been there to carry out medical evacuations and save lives, not to wage war.
Port-au-Prince and the ID cards
reported that bodies found on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince on Saturday were thought to belong to the missing men, and the same report said the bodies delivered to the military contingent had been badly burned. Bukele said one of the corpses was a child's and another was wearing a different country's army uniform.
Bukele also said one of the bodies was of a man of considerably greater height than the Salvadoran air technicians, and he said the remains included identification cards and uniforms from other countries. He posted pictures showing the ID card of a GSF member and a corresponding national ID card from Chad.
UN-backed force in Haiti
The missing men had been part of the UN-backed Gang Suppression Force, which has struggled to penetrate areas where gangs hold sway. Haiti has been ravaged by gang violence for years, and the situation worsened after the assassination of its president in 2021.
According to the UN, more than 5,700 people were killed or injured by gangs or during operations against them between 1 January and 11 September this year. The said a medical examination would be required to identify the badly burned bodies.
That leaves the mission at the point where recovery work depends on forensic identification rather than battlefield reports, and the families of the four Salvadoran men still face the same question: were the bodies the men, or someone else?
