Four Salvadoran aviation technicians are in the hands of Haitian gangs after Sunday's ambush outside Port-au-Prince — and the president who crushed the gangs at home has now sent his military to bring them back.
🚨 El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele is issuing a fierce warning to Haitian gang leaders after four Salvadoran aviation technicians were taken hostage in an armed ambush near Port-au-Prince.
The technicians were reportedly returning from buying food when gangs attacked their armored vehicle with gunfire and explosives. The four were working with the UN-backed Gang Suppression Force, supporting medical evacuation operations. U.S. Ambassador Mike Waltz has said they are believed to be alive.
Bukele, who has made his crackdown on criminal gangs a defining part of his presidency, warned that the attack was nothing compared to what could follow if the hostages are not returned alive.
"We have already finished with the gangs in El Salvador, and we can finish with you too," he declared. 🔥🇸🇻
Now, the priority is getting all four men home safely. The world is watching to see what happens next. 🇸🇻
The four men disappeared on Sunday, when gangs opened fire on their armored vehicle in the Santo area of Croix-des-Bouquets, on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, according to the Associated Press. The vehicle caught fire, the technicians fled the burning vehicle, and they were left unaccounted for — the first major attack since the international gang suppression force began operations in Haiti. Reuters reported that the men were returning from a market to their base, and that El Salvador's military and the Gang Suppression Force had already announced efforts earlier this week to recover them, with intense fighting in the area limiting access.
On Wednesday, Bukele made the mission public and put it in his own words. "Today, we have launched a military operation to rescue them," he said, without providing further details about the operation or identifying the group holding the Salvadorans, Reuters reported. The Gang Suppression Force did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
"We have already finished with the gangs in El Salvador, and we can finish with you too."
The men Bukele is sending soldiers to rescue are not combat troops. "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," Bukele said in his post on X, as Reuters reported. The four are aviation technicians serving with the UN-backed Gang Suppression Force, the international mission mandated to help Haitian police fight the gangs that have cemented their grip on the capital. A year into its mandate, the force has reached just over a third of its planned size and has had limited impact on Haiti's security, Reuters reported; several nations, including Chad and Sri Lanka, have deployed personnel alongside El Salvador.
The warning carries weight because of who is issuing it. Bukele's anti-gang crackdown at home — a state of exception in force since 2022, mass arrests of suspected gang members and the CECOT mega-prison built to hold them — dismantled the MS-13 and Barrio 18 structures that once made El Salvador one of the most violent countries on earth, and turned him into the region's best-known hardliner on gangs. It is that record he is now pointing at Haiti's gang leaders.
For now, the four technicians are believed to be alive, and a rescue operation announced by the president himself is under way. Bukele has left the men holding them in no doubt about the alternative: release the Salvadorans alive and unharmed, because — in the words of his announcement as reported by AP — what happened today is nothing compared to what is coming.