SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador.- President Nayib Bukele warned on Thursday that the more than 2,000 Salvadoran soldiers deployed in Haiti will rescue four missing Salvadoran servicemen «by the good way or the bad way» if the gangs holding them do not hand them over alive.
«If they do not hand them over by the good way, we are going to rescue them by the bad way», Bukele said during a press conference alongside Peruvian President Keiko Fujimori in San Salvador. «Along the way we are going to finish them off», he added, referring to the gangs.
The four missing air technicians
The four soldiers, members of the United Nations-backed Gang Suppression Force (GSF), disappeared on October 18 when armed gangs attacked the armored vehicle in which they were returning to their base on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, in the Croix-des-Bouquets area. They are air technicians who were on a medical evacuation mission.
Bukele insisted the operation is a rescue mission, not an occupation. «We are not an invading army, nor do we have any neocolonial intention», he said. «Our intention, and we have authorization from all international and national levels, is a rescue mission for our air technicians. Our objective is to rescue them alive, and along the way we are going to teach a lesson to the gangs that kidnapped them.»
He added a promise in the other direction: «If they hand over our air technicians alive, that same day we return.» El Salvador's Foreign Ministry said more than 2,000 members of the Armed Forces have been sent to Haiti in a large-scale operation backed by several countries and international organizations, including special forces units. It is one of the largest foreign military deployments to Haiti since the United Nations Stabilization Mission (Minustah) left in 2017.
El Salvador pays 90 percent of the bill
Bukele said El Salvador is financing 90 percent of the operation, with some logistical help from other countries, and he did not answer a question from AFP about the total budget or which countries provide technical support. Before the press conference, he posted a video on X showing troops, armored vehicles and helicopters boarding aircraft. One of the planes, a Boeing 737-401 belonging to the Ecuadorian private company Aeroregional, made several trips between Ecuador, El Salvador and Haiti between October 23 and 27, according to flight-tracking site Flightradar24.
«If we finished off the gangs here, we can finish them off there. It is their decision whether they want us to finish them off or not», Bukele said. The deployment represents at least 10 percent of El Salvador's army, estimated at 20,000 troops in 2021.
The mission unfolds as violence escalates in Port-au-Prince. On Thursday, the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF) warned of a rise in violence in the Haitian capital, with women and children among the wounded arriving at its hospitals. A CID Gallup poll this week found 86 percent of Salvadorans support the Haiti rescue mission.
Sources: EFE via Swissinfo, October 30, 2026; AFP via El Universo, October 30, 2026; Infobae, October 30, 2026; Diario El Salvador, October 30, 2026.