Air units of the Armed Forces of El Salvador deployed in Haiti have acted to stop an attack launched by local armed gangs against international personnel of the Gang Suppression Force (GSF), made up of soldiers from Chad, as Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has confirmed.
"The gangs were attacking the GSF soldiers from Chad. We arrived quickly and repelled the attackers with our attack helicopters," Bukele asserted in a message circulated on social media, also emphasizing that the criminal organizations "no longer have the advantage" on the ground after this display of military power.
The ratification by the head of the Salvadoran State comes after the Haitian outlet Infos Partage reported the presence of aerial patrols and of shots fired from a military helicopter in the commune of Croix-des-Bouquets, one of the areas with the highest concentration of armed groups in the metropolitan area surrounding Port-au-Prince.
This operation by the Salvadoran troops is part of a broad-based offensive coordinated with the Executive of Haiti's Prime Minister, Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, who recently stated that the Haitian State "continues to be responsible for the political and strategic direction of security operations" in the country.
The Haitian leader stressed that the GSF and the Salvadoran contingent do not replace the State, but rather act as support in the fight against armed gangs.
El Salvador has deployed in Haiti a contingent of more than 2,000 military personnel with the primary objective of tracking the territory and rescuing alive four Salvadoran aerotechnicians who were kidnapped after an ambush, in an operation that Bukele has insisted on presenting as focused exclusively on the liberation of his compatriots and not as a mission of occupation.