100 Salvadoran Soldiers Arrive in Haiti

The first hundred Salvadoran special forces soldiers landed in Port-au-Prince on Thursday, Oct. 22, the start of a buildup that has since grown to several hundred troops. President Nayib Bukele ordered the deployment after four Salvadoran aviation technicians disappeared in a gang ambush in Croix-des-Bouquets on Oct. 18. A source familiar with the operation told the Miami Herald that the first flight was “only the beginning.”

That proved accurate. HaitiLibre and the Herald both reported that a second group of about 100 could follow within days. By Friday, an anonymous security source told AFP that roughly 200 Salvadoran troops had arrived over two days. Haitian government sources quoted by Le Nouvelliste, and later the Herald, put the figure at about 450 by the weekend. El Salvador has not published any official number.

The flights kept coming. The Herald counted at least a dozen since Thursday, including two that landed at Toussaint Louverture International Airport on Sunday and a chartered cargo plane on Monday afternoon, carrying both troops and equipment. According to the Salvadoran daily El Mundo, the planes came from the United States, while a source told it that no U.S. soldiers were taking part.

The new arrivals change the nature of El Salvador's presence. Until now, its contingent was built around air support. El Salvador's Legislative Assembly approved the mission in October 2024, and its first small team reached Haiti in January 2025, followed by about 70 personnel in February to fly helicopter evacuations for the Kenya-led police mission. Bukele has repeatedly described his people in Haiti as pilots and technicians who save lives rather than fight. A paratrooper battalion was among the units filmed praying before departure, according to the Salvadoran news site elsalvador.com.

Officially, the reinforcements serve under the Gang Suppression Force, the UN-authorized mission that replaced the Kenya-led force after Security Council resolution 2793 of September 2025. The GSF said they would support search and security operations in the Plaine du Cul-de-Sac, in close coordination with the Haitian National Police. The Herald reports, citing unnamed sources, that Bukele also wants a larger force able to act on its own, answering to his commander on the ground, a prospect that raises the question of two parallel chains of command.

The scale matters because the GSF itself is still thin. AFP puts its current strength at about 2,000 personnel from six countries, far short of the 5,500 the mission is meant to reach. The force only began deploying in April, with soldiers from Chad. A few hundred Salvadoran special forces therefore represent a significant share of the foreign troops now in the country.

On Monday, Salvadoran soldiers and Haitian police carried out a joint operation in the Bon Repos area, the Herald reported. The four missing technicians had still not been found, and the GSF had not confirmed whether remains handed to it on Saturday were theirs.

Haiti's Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé has called the soldiers' release an absolute priority, The Haitian Times reported. For residents of the Plaine du Cul-de-Sac, the buildup means more armed operations close to home, in an area where the Chen Mechan and 400 Mawozo gangs hold ground and where families had already begun to leave after the first exchanges of fire.

NAGO covers the Oct. 18 ambush and the gangs' response in a separate report.