El Salvador now has more than 2,000 soldiers in Haiti, its government said Wednesday, roughly twice the number reported only a day earlier, as President Nayib Bukele escalates an operation to find four Salvadoran servicemen who vanished after a gang ambush outside Port-au-Prince on Oct. 18.
On Tuesday, a Haitian security official told Reuters that about 1,000 Salvadoran troops had landed over a string of flights. By Wednesday, El Salvador’s foreign ministry said Bukele had informed Haitian Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé of a “robust deployment” of more than 2,000, the BBC reported. The ministry said the troops would also back “security efforts against gangs in Haiti,” and described the mission as a “large-scale operation” supported by several countries and international organizations.
Washington has played at least a logistical role. A U.S. military official told Reuters that U.S. Southern Command supplied C-130 transport planes to help fly part of the contingent in.
Eleven days without answers
The four men are air force technicians assigned to the UN-backed Gang Suppression Force (GSF). They were heading back to base in an armored vehicle when gunmen attacked them in Croix-des-Bouquets, a gang-controlled municipality on the capital’s northeastern edge.
According to Reuters, the men jumped from the burning vehicle and have not been seen since. Bukele has said they were returning from a market and that he believes criminal groups are holding them hostage.
The search has already produced one painful false lead. Earlier this week, Haitian authorities turned over four bodies to Salvadoran special forces, saying they were the missing servicemen. Bukele rejected that identification, the BBC reported, saying one of the dead was a child and another wore a different country’s military uniform.
No armed group has claimed the ambush.
Wilson Joseph, leader of the 400 Mawozo gang, has circulated videos denying that he holds the Salvadorans and disclaiming any role in their fate, Reuters reported.
Bukele’s tone hardened last week, when he warned on X that he would wipe out Haiti’s gangs, as he did in El Salvador, if the four were not released.
The scale of the new deployment stands out against the mission it is meant to support. Before the ambush, El Salvador had at least 124 personnel in Haiti under the GSF, according to a UN report cited by Reuters; Bukele has said they were pilots and technicians sent to evacuate wounded soldiers, not to fight. The entire GSF, meanwhile, stands at about 2,000 troops, just over a third of its planned strength a year after the UN Security Council expanded its mandate in October 2025.
Key questions remain open. It is not clear who will command the Salvadoran contingent, how long it will stay, or whether more soldiers will follow. Bukele has not given a final figure, and his office did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
For Haitians, the operation lands in a country where armed groups hold much of the capital and the roads around it. The UN says more than 5,700 people have been killed in gang violence in Haiti so far this year, and nearly 1.5 million have been forced from their homes. Haiti has had no elected leaders for years, and the violence has deepened since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021.
Source: BBC News
https://ctninfo.com/el-salvadors-hai…ps-2000-soldiers/
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