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Patrulla militar genérica junto a vehículos blindados en una calle caribeña
Imagen alusiva de una patrulla militar en una calle caribeña, generada para ilustrar la búsqueda en Puerto Príncipe. · EPM

Bukele denies alleged bombing claim in Haiti

President Nayib Bukele denied the allegation attributed to a Haitian organization about supposed bombings by the Salvadoran mission in Haiti, noted that the…

--- The context --- Four Salvadoran soldiers have been missing for twelve days following attacks by Haitian armed gangs, and the mission deployed in Haiti is searching for them in Port-au-Prince. Against that tense backdrop, a Haitian organization alleged supposed bombings against civilians, an accusation attributed to that organization which El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele, publicly and firmly denied this Saturday. --- The facts --- According to what Bukele stated on his X account, the mission does not even have bombs at its disposal. He further noted that the attack helicopters did not arrive in Haiti until October 29 and that to date they have not flown a single mission, while the report containing the allegation was published a day earlier, on October 28. The president accompanied his message with a screenshot of the letter that the United Nations Association-Haiti sent to UN Secretary-General António Guterres. On the ground, dozens of recently arrived Salvadoran soldiers carried out their first patrols through streets of Port-au-Prince last Friday as part of the search. They moved through the commune of Tabarre, northeast of the capital, near the Santo area, in the Croix-des-Bouquets district, where soldiers of the Gang Suppression Force were ambushed on October 18. The force, which now counts more than 2,000 personnel, was also seen near Toussaint Louverture International Airport, in the Clercine area, in trucks and armored vehicles supported from helicopters. --- The positions --- Bukele argued that these organizations lie with total impunity while exercising enormous influence over international organizations, and he described them as lobbying firms for criminals and cartels disguised as humanitarian organizations. In his message he also reposted an entry according to which the United Nations Association-Haiti is not part of the UN but a diaspora advocacy group, and according to that same entry its founder, Harvey Dupiton, originally from Croix-des-Bouquets, wrote that since October 22 the troops had attacked civilian neighborhoods there and in nearby Canaan. That version remains an attributed allegation, not a confirmed fact. --- What remains unknown --- The available information includes no independent verification of the alleged bombings, and the fate of the four soldiers missing since the day of the attack remains unknown. Nor is there detail of a response from the organization concerned to the timeline arguments set out by the Salvadoran president. --- Unanswered questions --- Will the UN comment on the letter sent to it by the Haitian organization? Will there be independent verification of the alleged attacks reported since October 22? Will the four missing soldiers be found, and what will then be learned about what happened after the October 18 ambush? --- EPM analysis --- The clash of versions unfolds while the search operation remains active on the streets of Port-au-Prince and the Salvadoran presence already exceeds 2,000 personnel, as Bukele himself confirmed on Wednesday. The president further maintained that in that campaign they are teaching the gangs a lesson and that, if they finished off El Salvador's gangs, they can finish off them, leaving the decision to Haitians, in remarks on Thursday during the visit by Peru's president, Keiko Fujimori. 📌 EPM Take: In EPM's view, the dispute requires carefully separating the allegation attributed to the Haitian organization from verifiable facts on the ground, because no accusation of this gravity can be taken as proven without independent verification, and neither can it be dismissed without examining the letter, the dates cited and the mission's real activity during the search for the four missing soldiers in Haiti, with public transparency about every decision taken by the command responsible for the operation now under way.
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