Some Haitians have cheered on El Salvadorian troops deployed to fight gangs which have almost taken control of the Haitian capital. El Salvador’s Bukele promised to wipe out the gangs after four of its citizens were kidnapped.
Published On 8 Nov 20268 Nov 2026
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El Salvador troops to support rescue mission to find four UN-backed soldiers who disappeared after ambush.
Published On 29 Oct 202629 Oct 2026
El Salvador plans to send more than 2,000 soldiers to Haiti to search for four missing Salvadoran aviation technicians and fight armed gangs, as the Caribbean country postpones its elections again.
El Salvador‘s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced the deployment on Wednesday, the same day Haiti’s electoral authorities moved the first round of presidential and parliamentary elections from December 13 to July 18, 2027.
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The delay is another setback to restoring elected government in a country where gang violence has made preparations for voting dangerous.
The four Salvadorans disappeared on October 18 after armed men ambushed their vehicle in Croix-des-Bouquets, east of the capital, Port-au-Prince.
They were serving with an international security mission supporting Haitian police.
President Nayib Bukele has already sent troops to help find them.
In an October 21 post on X, written in Haitian Creole, he threatened to destroy Haiti’s gangs if they did not release the missing personnel.
Bukele spoke by telephone with Haitian Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aime on Wednesday.
Fils-Aime’s office said they had agreed to strengthen cooperation on rescue efforts and security operations.
It remains unclear whether the additional Salvadoran troops will join the United Nations-backed Gang Suppression Force, a multinational mission assisting Haitian police against gangs, or operate separately.
Foreign troops have served in Haiti under UN-backed security arrangements since 2024, partly to create safer conditions for elections.
Haiti’s nine-member Provisional Electoral Council, which organises elections, also scheduled a second round of voting and local polls for October 4, 2027.
It extended deadlines for candidates to register and introduced online voter registration.
Fewer than 900,000 people had registered by Wednesday, the Miami Herald reported, out of 6.5 million Haitians holding the identification cards needed to enrol.
Gang-controlled roads make it difficult to reach registration centres, while violence has forced many people from their homes.
Haiti has held no elections since 2016 and its last president, Jovenel Moise, was assassinated in 2021. Successive transitional authorities have delayed a return to voting, citing insecurity.
An international food security assessment released on Wednesday found that 5.94 million Haitians face acute hunger, including 1.8 million in emergency conditions, as violence disrupts farming and food deliveries.
The number facing acute hunger is projected to rise to 6.35 million by mid-2027.
Publisher Boreal says investigations confirmed the Hatian-Canadian Thelyson Orelien used AI in his breakthrough novel.
Published On 21 Oct 202621 Oct 2026
The publisher of best-selling Haitian-Canadian writer Thelyson Orelien says it has severed its professional relationship with the author after confirming he used artificial intelligence to help write his novel, “It Was Either That or Die”.
Boreal said on Wednesday that it conducted a further investigation after allegations surfaced in September to determine whether AI was used to write the novel.
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“New information, confirmed over the past few days, indicates that artificial intelligence was used in the writing process” of the novel, a Boreal statement said.
Orelien had previously denied allegations surrounding his breakthrough novel, and last week, the Canadian publisher said it was standing by the 38-year-old writer.
Boreal said it did not know the extent of AI’s use in the writing process “and we will likely never have a definitive answer”.
It said it gathered all the working versions of the novel and hired an outside party to analyse the various drafts.
“The results obtained this week revealed traces of AI tags in the metadata of certain documents,” Boreal said.
The publisher said it had tried to work with Orelien to gather the evidence necessary to prove his innocence.
That effort was inconclusive, and Orelien “subsequently announced that he would not provide any further information,” the publisher said.
Orelien’s novel about migration, known by its original French title “C’etait ca ou mourir”, had been scheduled for translation in more than 20 countries.
France’s top book prize, the Goncourt, removed “C’etait ca ou mourir” from its shortlist after tests with the AI detector Pangram indicated a 100 percent probability that it contained computer-generated text.
But Orelien called the allegations “slander and heresy” in a statement sent to AFP earlier this month.
“Here and there I did use tools for research, particularly for foreign idioms,” he said.
“But not a single sentence in this book was created by a machine, nor the meaning or the structure of a story that comes from my gut,” Orelien said.
On Wednesday, he stood firm, telling the French newspaper Liberation that he had used AI “in the creative process” for “historical research”.
The author said he began writing the book in late 2017, before AI services such as ChatGPT were widely available.
When the allegations first surfaced in September, Orelien said he suspected racism was behind the attacks on him.