MADRID 5 Ene. (EUROPA PRESS) –
A contingent of 150 Guatemalan soldiers arrived in Haiti this weekend to reinforce the deployment of international forces in the country, the Multinational Security Support Mission in Haiti (MMASH), with the aim of combating gang control. in Port-au-Prince.
This Saturday the second group of 75 Guatemalan soldiers arrived in Haiti, while the first had arrived on Friday. Both contingents join the 400 Kenyan police officers to combat criminal gangs.
Members of the security forces of El Salvador have also arrived in the Central American country.
The Central American soldiers arrived in Haiti on a US military plane that landed at the Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince in an event attended by the acting president of the Haitian Transition Council, Leslie Voltaire; the Prime Minister, Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, the American Ambassador, Denis Hankins; or the commander of the MMASH, the Kenyan Godfrey Otunge. After this shipment, Guatemala has 150 troops.
Haiti, which in the last year has seen a marked rise in violence by criminal groups, has not had a president since at the beginning of July 2021 a group of armed individuals broke into his official residence and murdered Jovenel Moise. Shortly after, Ariel Henry ascended to the position of prime minister amid criticism and after several years of instability. In March of this year he resigned after the wave of violence that shook the nation.
Since then, a Transitional Presidential Council has been created with the aim of carrying out the task of pacification and creating a Provisional Electoral Council to organize the first elections in a decade.
The UN mission has recorded more than 5,350 deaths and more than 2,155 injuries as a direct consequence of acts of violence carried out by criminal gangs in the year 2024 alone.