GSF may have found Soldiers remains!
Port-au-Prince, Oct 25 (EFE).-
The multinational Gang Suppression Force (GSF) said Sunday it received unidentified human remains that could belong to four Salvadoran military personnel missing since an armed gang ambush in Haiti a week ago.
The account contradicts Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who said the remains did not belong to his country’s missing personnel.
“The GSF confirms that it has received, through a third-party humanitarian organization, remains suspected of being those of the four personnel from the Salvadoran contingent currently missing,” the force said in a statement.
“At this stage, the GSF is not in a position to confirm that the remains are those of the missing personnel,” it said, who disappeared during an attack on Oct. 18 in Santo, an area of Croix-des-Bouquets in metropolitan Port-au-Prince.
Bukele on Saturday rejected the possibility that the remains belonged to his country’s personnel. El Salvador had sent a military contingent to Haiti earlier in the week to help search for the missing troops.
“They are not our men,” Bukele wrote on X, saying the burned remains recovered by Hero Client Rescue, a nongovernmental organization led by former US State Department security official Scott Reece, did not match the missing Salvadorans.
Bukele said the remains included those of a child, a man considerably taller than the missing personnel and someone wearing part of a military uniform from another country.
He also cited identification documents and military uniforms from other countries found among the remains, sharing photographs of two documents bearing the name of a Chadian national.
The GSF said Sunday that the documents belonged to a soldier serving with its Chadian contingent who was safe and had not been reported missing. The soldier lost an identification card during search operations for the Salvadoran personnel, the force said.
The GSF’s special representative, Jack Christofides, expressed solidarity with the missing personnel’s families, fellow soldiers and the government and people of El Salvador.
The force was authorized by the UN Security Council a year ago to help combat armed gangs and stabilize Haiti. It comprises more than 1,000 troops from El Salvador, Guatemala, Jamaica, Mongolia, Sri Lanka and Chad.
“The coordination between Haitian security forces and the GSF remains essential to confronting the armed gangs,” the statement said. EFE
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