San Salvador, El Salvador

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Saturday denied that human remains recovered by a nongovernment organization in Haiti were those of four missing Salvadoran soldiers.

The New York Times reported Sunday that medics were examining four bodies -- which one unnamed source said were badly burned -- to see whether they belonged to the soldiers that went missing after an ambush by armed Haitian gangs nearly a week ago.

"They are not our men. An NGO delivered human remains at the airport , claiming they belonged to our four air force technicians," Bukele said on X in response to the US newspaper's report.

"However, the remains correspond to a child, a man of considerably greater height" than the Salvadoran soldiers, and a person wearing the uniform of another country's army, he wrote.

"Identification cards and military uniforms from other countries were also found," added Bukele, who posted photos of two of the documents.

The Salvadoran soldiers, who are part of the Gang Suppression Force (GSF), a UN-backed mission, went missing last Sunday when armed gangs attacked the armored vehicle taking them back to their base from a market on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince.

Bukele deployed special forces to Haiti earlier this week to support the search operation in the Plaine du Cul-de-Sac area near Port-au-Prince.

On Wednesday, in a post on X written in Haitian Creole, he threatened to wipe out Haiti's gangs, as he says he has done with those in El Salvador, if they did not release the Salvadorans.

Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, has for years been gripped by a deep crisis that has worsened recently with a rise in killings, kidnappings, rapes and the recruitment of minors by armed gangs.

The GSF is making slow progress in supporting Haiti's police force, which is overwhelmed by the violence. The mission aims to reach 5,500 personnel, but currently has just 2,000 members from six countries.

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