Haiti: police forces retake national football team stadium from gangs

Haitian police announced Thursday that they had regained control of the country's main stadium, occupied by gangs for two years and which hosted the national football team's matches before it was forced into exile.

In a press release, the Haitian police announced that they had regained “total control” of the Sylvio-Cator stadium in Port-au-Prince, alongside foreign mercenaries. The site was then placed under the protection of Salvadoran soldiers, noted an AFP photographer.

“We will now establish an operational base in the stadium in order to continue our progress in the heart of the territories controlled by the gangs,” confirmed Thursday the President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, in a publication on X written in Haitian Creole. The head of state indicated that the military would launch an “offensive” and urged gang members to leave the area: “Those who choose to stay to fight our forces will have to bear the consequences.”

The post was accompanied by a video showing several soldiers and armored vehicles entering the stadium. Some footage shows shots being fired towards the exterior of the compound, while others reveal human skulls among the rubble. This operation comes as part of the deployment of around 2,000 soldiers ordered by Nayib Bukele. The Salvadoran president is transposing abroad his brutal method of fighting gangs, which has been successful in his country, but is accused of human rights violations. On Tuesday, he announced that his troops had destroyed the “headquarters” of 400 Mawozo, one of the main criminal gangs in the country.

The deployment of this Salvadoran contingent took place at the end of October, and these thousands of soldiers have since operated outside the framework of the Gang Suppression Force, supported by the UN. Inaugurated in 1953 and able to accommodate around 10,000 spectators, the Sylvio-Cator stadium fell into the hands of gangs in 2024. The latter now control a large part of Haitian territory, the poorest country in Latin America and the Caribbean.