President Nayib Bukele said Tuesday that Salvadoran troops deployed to Haiti had destroyed the headquarters of one of the Caribbean nation’s most powerful gangs. Bukele has deployed more than 2,000 soldiers to Haiti since late October, after four Salvadoran troops went missing in the country.”We destroyed the house of (gang leader) Lanmo San Jou and the 400 Mawozo gang’s headquarters,” he wrote on X in the Haitian Creole language.
The right-wing leader posted video of at least three helicopters circling overhead and firing on the two-story house in Croix-des-Bouquets, near the capital Port-au-Prince. People are seen fleeing the area. The Miami Herald newspaper reported that the attack took place on Sunday and was conducted by a Haitian police task force backed by Salvadoran troops. Twenty people died, it wrote on Monday, citing anonymous sources.
The gang leader, whose real name is Wilson Joseph, was not in the house at the time of the attack, pro-government media in El Salvador reported. The attack came after a user on X posted a photograph on November 5 of what the user said was the gang headquarters and asked Bukele to destroy it. Bukele answered at the time: “where is this house? Give us the exact address and we will destroy it.””We fulfilled our promise,” Bukele wrote Tuesday.
He is known for iron-fisted rule and little tolerance of dissent in El Salvador and likes to call himself the world’s “coolest dictator.”Gang warfare and political chaos have long plagued Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas. The gang run by Joseph is known for kidnappings and extortion. In 2021, it abducted 16 US missionaries and a Canadian. The vast majority of recently deployed Salvadoran soldiers are not participating in a UN-backed Gang Suppression Force (GSF) deployed to Haiti, raising concerns about their rules of engagement.
Bukele initially stated the deployment aimed at bringing home four Salvadoran GSF soldiers who went missing during an ambush attack on October 18. But more recently, he has hinted at a broader goal of eliminating Haiti’s powerful gangs, as he did in his own country with a campaign that has raised allegations of rights abuses. Amnesty International on Monday urged both countries to ensure that all operations conducted by Salvadoran forces in Haiti comply with international human rights law.
The thousands of Salvadoran troops flown into Haiti since last month have effectively doubled the contingent of foreign soldiers operating there. The Caribbean island nation is set to hold elections in July and October next year, marking its first polls in more than a decade.
Tue, 10 Nov 2026 19:59:38 GMT