In a high-profile announcement posted to his official X platform account, El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele confirmed that Salvadoran military forces have carried out a coordinated ground and air assault targeting the purported headquarters of 400 Mawozo, Haiti’s largest and most violent criminal gang, located in the Croix-des-Bouquets suburb on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince. The operation marks the first offensive military action by Salvadoran troops in Haitian territory since more than 2,000 service members were deployed to the Caribbean nation last month, following the brazen abduction of four Salvadoran air force technicians who were seized at gunpoint while purchasing groceries in October.
Bukele shared accompanying video footage showing multiple military helicopters unleashing fire on a sprawling fortified complex, with dozens of individuals captured on camera fleeing the site rather than mounting armed resistance. The operation was reportedly carried out in collaboration with Haiti’s National Police drone task force, as confirmed by multiple on-the-ground sources cited by the Miami Herald. The targeted site is alleged to be the personal compound of 400 Mawozo leader Wilson “Lanmò San Jou” Joseph, though local reporting indicates the gang chief was not present during the strike. Haitian Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé publicly lauded the Salvadoran military for its commitment to anti-gang operations, vowing that the two nations, alongside the UN-backed Gang Suppression Force (GSF), would continue coordinated efforts to reclaim state authority over gang-held territories, declaring “THE GANGS WILL GET NO SLEEP!” in a follow-up X post.
Unconfirmed local media reports suggest up to 20 fatalities resulted from the assault, but no official Haitian or Salvadoran authority has released verified casualty counts, and the full scope of structural damage to the compound remains uncorroborated, with local Haitian residents debating whether the site was fully destroyed or only partially damaged. Independent journalistic outlets including the BBC have also been unable to independently verify the authenticity of Bukele’s shared footage, or confirm that the targeted property is indeed 400 Mawozo’s central operational hub.
The deployment of thousands of Salvadoran troops to Haiti has sparked widespread scrutiny from international observers and human rights organizations. Critics have raised alarms that a large portion of the Salvadoran contingent is not operating under the formal command structure of the UN-mandated GSF, casting doubt on the legal and operational legitimacy of their activities on Haitian soil. Amnesty International has issued an official public statement urging both national governments to ensure all Salvadoran military operations in Haiti strictly adhere to international human rights law, to prevent disproportionate use of force and civilian harm.
The strike appears to have been directly prompted by a public X user post that shared the location of the 400 Mawozo stronghold, to which Bukele publicly responded “Where is that house? Give us the exact address, and we’ll destroy it” — a reply that has since been removed from the platform for violating X’s content policies.
400 Mawozo, long notorious for systematic kidnappings, extortion campaigns, targeted murders and cross-border arms trafficking, is the single most powerful armed criminal group operating in Haiti, a nation already grappling with years of systemic gang violence that has left the vast majority of Port-au-Prince and large swathes of surrounding rural territory under gang control. United Nations data records that between January 1 and September 11 of 2024 alone, at least 5,700 Haitian people have been killed or wounded by gang violence or counter-gang military operations. As the poorest nation in the Americas, Haiti faces a cascading security and humanitarian collapse that regional governments have struggled to mitigate.
President Bukele, who rose to international prominence for his controversial mass gang crackdown in El Salvador that drove a historic, dramatic drop in domestic homicide rates, has repeatedly vowed to replicate that security model in Haiti to dismantle the criminal networks holding the nation hostage. However, human rights advocates have roundly condemned Bukele’s domestic anti-gang framework, noting it relies on endlessly extended emergency state laws, mass arbitrary detentions held in overcrowded high-security mega-prisons, and sweeping group trials of thousands of alleged gang members that lack basic due process protections.