Haiti police retake Port-au-Prince stadium from gangs
Salvadoran soldiers now guard Sylvio Cator Stadium after two years of gang control, and President Nayib Bukele says his troops will set up a base there.
Haiti's National Police said they retook Sylvio Cator Stadium in downtown Port-au-Prince from armed gangs in the early hours of Thursday, 12 November, ending two years in which the national football team could not play at home.
The police said in a statement that officers had taken "full control" of the stadium and its surroundings together with a unit it calls the Task Force, a private security group serving the government. Security of the site was then handed to Salvadoran soldiers, according to the same statement.
The police gave no exact hour for the operation, no count of the officers or soldiers involved and no casualty figures. The Rio Times reported that no reaction from the United Nations, the UN-backed Gang Suppression Force or Haiti's government had been published when it filed its report.
Gangs seized the stadium in 2024. It opened in 1953 and holds about 10,000 spectators, and it stands near the Bicentenaire district and the roads leading to Martissant, giving whoever holds it a view over routes into the city centre.
Haiti played its home World Cup qualifiers in Curaçao instead. The team, coached by the Frenchman Sébastien Migné, reached its second World Cup finals and lost all three group games, to Scotland, Brazil and Morocco, the Rio Times reported.
El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele, wrote on X in Haitian Creole on Thursday that his forces would set up an operational base in the stadium and use it to advance into gang-held territory. He told gang members to leave and warned that those who stayed to fight would bear the consequences. He posted video showing soldiers and armoured vehicles inside the ground.
About 2,000 Salvadoran soldiers arrived in late October, Africanews reported, operating outside the framework of the UN-backed Gang Suppression Force. France 24 reported the deployment followed an ambush that left four Salvadoran troops missing.
On 10 November, Bukele said his troops had destroyed the headquarters of 400 Mawozo, one of Haiti's main gangs, based around Croix-des-Bouquets near the capital. The gang kidnapped 17 missionaries from a US-based charity in October 2021; all had been freed or had escaped by mid-December that year.
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