Bukele denies bodies found in Haiti are four missing Salvadoran soldiers

The disappearance

Four Salvadoran soldiers serving with the Gang Suppression Force (GSF), a mission backed by the UN Security Council to take on gangs in Haiti, went missing after an ambush in Port-au-Prince on Sunday, 18 October. The New York Times reported that the men were driving through a gang stronghold when they were attacked, and that it was the first time the force had suffered casualties. El Salvador's government treats their disappearance as a kidnapping by Haitian gang members. President Nayib Bukele has said the men were aviation technicians working on the mission, mainly flying medical evacuations, and that they were seized as they returned from buying food at a market in the area. After the disappearance, Bukele sent special forces to Haiti to search for them, a deployment the Times described as hundreds of members. Earlier he had warned the gangs that he would wipe them out, as he said he had done in El Salvador, unless the men were freed.

Remains found on Saturday

On Saturday, 24 October, the New York Times reported that four bodies believed to be those of the Salvadoran soldiers had been found, citing two people close to the mission. DW, citing three people close to the mission, said forensic examiners were studying charred remains recovered that day in Santo, a locality in the Croix-des-Bouquets commune north of the capital. According to the Times, the bodies were located six days after the ambush, and Scott Reece, a former State Department security official, said his aid group had been hired to retrieve the dead. The group, Hero Client Rescue, is a Haiti-based medical evacuation service funded by the United States, and it was asked to collect the remains that Saturday afternoon. Identification will depend on tests, because the remains are badly damaged.

Bukele's denial

Bukele rejected the identification in a post on X, replying to the Times report. He wrote:

They are not our men.

He added that an NGO had handed over human remains at the airport, claiming they belonged to the four aviation technicians. According to Bukele, the remains instead belonged to a child, a man considerably taller than the Salvadorans, and a person wearing part of another country's army uniform. He also said identification cards and military uniforms from other countries had been found among the remains, and he posted photos of two of those documents. In a statement, he stressed the purpose of the mission:

Our mission consists only of pilots and technical staff, whose main work is carrying out medical evacuations and saving lives, not making war.

The same statement said the men had been seized while heading back from a market, a claim the government has not backed with any further detail in these reports.

What remains unclear

The bodies have not been identified, so the Times sources and Bukele's account stand side by side. DW reported that Haiti's crisis has deepened, with more killings, kidnappings, rapes and the recruitment of minors by armed gangs. The GSF is making slow progress in supporting the Haitian police, who are overwhelmed by the violence. The Times noted that the discovery came just days after Bukele sent his special forces, and forensic work on the remains is still under way.