Bodies handed over in Haiti are not the abducted soldiers, El Salvador President Bukele says

Four bodies handed over to Salvadoran special forces in Haiti are not those of the four abducted service members, El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele has said, stating that the remains are "not our men".

According to Bukele, a nongovernmental organisation delivered the remains to an airport in Haiti claiming they were four Salvadoran air technicians. But one of the corpses was a child's and another was wearing part of a uniform from a different country's army.

The president said the remains also included a man of considerably greater height than their air technicians, and that identification cards and uniforms from other countries were found with the bodies.

Bukele posted pictures showing the ID card of a Gang Suppression Force (GSF) member and a corresponding national ID card from the African country of Chad.

On Thursday Bukele dispatched a military contingent, reportedly of hundreds of soldiers, after four Salvadoran men vanished following an ambush by heavily armed criminal groups.

The missing four were members of the UN-backed Gang Suppression Force (GSF), which is tasked with tackling worsening gang violence in Haiti.

They were travelling back to their camp in an armoured vehicle when they were attacked in the Croix-des-Bouquets area, which is controlled by armed groups. No gang has so far claimed responsibility for the attack.

Bukele previously said the Salvadoran military operation in Haiti had the sole purpose of returning the four men alive. According to a Haitian newspaper, about 450 soldiers have so far been deployed.

An earlier report had said bodies found on Saturday on the outskirts of the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, were thought to belong to the missing men. But those bodies were badly burned, and a medical examination would be required to identify them, the report said.

One unnamed source briefed on the situation said the ID card posted by Bukele in fact belonged to a soldier who had lost it when he was injured.

Bukele said the four GSF members were primarily in Haiti to carry out medical evacuations and save lives, not to wage war.

The Salvadoran armed forces said helicopters were deployed when the men were abducted and multiple attempts were made to reach the location, but those efforts were hampered by fighting in the area.

Haiti has been ravaged by gang violence for years, and the situation has worsened in the political vacuum that followed the assassination of its president in 2021. The multinational force sent to quell the violence has struggled to penetrate the areas the gangs hold.

The UN said at the start of October that more than 5,700 people were killed or injured by gangs or during operations against them in Haiti between 1 January and 11 September this year.