Oct 21 (Reuters) - El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele on Wednesday said that Haitian gangs were holding four Salvadaron members of an international UN-backed security force hostage, and that he had launched a military operation to being them back unharmed.
El Salvador’s military and the Gang Suppression Force, mandated to help Haitian police fight powerful gangs, earlier this week announced efforts to recover the missing Salvadorans, but said intense fighting in the area had limited access.
• “Today, we have launched a military operation to rescue them,” Bukele said, without providing further details about the operation or identifying the group holding the Salvadorans hostage.
• The Gang Suppression Force did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
• The four Salvadorans went missing on Sunday after they leapt from a burning armored vehicle that was ambushed by armed gangs on the outskirts of the capital while returning from a market to their base, security officials said.
• Haitian gangs have cemented their influence over the capital and expanded to surrounding regions over recent years off the back of a longstanding political vacuum, widespread extortion and a flow of illegal arms largely from the US.
• Several nations including Chad and Sri Lanka have deployed soldiers as part of the Gang Suppression Force, which a year into its mandate has reached just over a third of its planned size and has had limited impact on Haiti’s security.
• Bukele said the missing men were aviation technicians, not combatants.
• “Our mission consists only of pilots and technical personnel, whose primary job is to carry out medical evacuations and save lives, not to wage war,” he said in a post X.
(Reporting by Gerardo Arbaiza in San Salvador and Sarah Morland in Mexico City; Editing by Natalia Siniawski)
