Bukele rejects accusations of airstrikes on civilians in Haiti

Dispute over the Salvadoran contingent in Haiti

El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele on Saturday rejected accusations against his country, whose troops serve as part of the UN-backed force in Haiti. The claims are that Salvadorans carried out airstrikes on civilians. Anadolu reports this.

The essence of the accusations and the president's response

The accusations were made by the United Nations Association – Haiti (UNA-Haiti) in an open letter to UN Secretary-General António Guterres dated October 30. The organization said Salvadoran forces carried out aerial bombings, attack helicopter strikes and heavy-weapon operations in densely populated areas near the capital Port-au-Prince, including Croix-des-Bouquets, Canaan and La Plaine du Cul-de-Sac, and demanded an investigation into alleged civilian casualties, claiming that children are being killed by foreign forces rather than armed gangs.

The timeline Bukele cites

Bukele's key argument is the timeline: according to him, the helicopters arrived in Haiti on October 29, a day before Drop Site News published the accusations, and as of Saturday had not flown a single sortie. He added that the equipment's arrival was widely covered by the media and documented in videos and social media posts. The deployment of Salvadoran troops itself followed an ambush on October 18 in which four Salvadoran aviation technicians from the UN-backed force went missing; Bukele presented the mission as an operation to rescue them. Bukele also accused non-governmental organizations of spreading false information and influencing international bodies, calling them