Haitian Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé announced on X that the country’s gangs had lost another of their leaders, writing that there is now “one gang leader fewer,” Nettavisen reported. The dead man, identified in reporting by Reuters as Saintil, was fatally wounded in a drone strike on the gang-controlled neighborhood of Boston on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince.
The details, as Archyde’s international desk has assembled them from the Nettavisen report and the underlying material it cites, run like this: according to a report from the human rights organization RNDDH, which Reuters has gained access to, Saintil suffered serious injuries to the abdominal region in the drone attack on Thursday evening. He died the next day while receiving treatment.
Fils-Aimé paired the announcement with a pledge. “The struggle to free the country from the bandits’ grip continues with undiminished strength,” he wrote, per Nettavisen’s translation of his post.
A strike Fils-Aimé calls one of the hardest blows since 2024
Nettavisen characterizes it as one of the hardest blows against Haiti’s gang leadership since 2024, and it lands in the middle of an offensive in which Haitian authorities and recently deployed Salvadoran forces are taking part.
The government is attempting to restore stability before the recently postponed vote, which means the security campaign and the political timetable are now running on the same clock.
Nettavisen’s related reporting records more than 40 killed in gang retaliation attacks in Haiti — a figure the prime minister’s triumphant post does not mention, and one that sits uncomfortably beside it.
The UN secretary-general apologized to Haiti’s inhabitants, as Nettavisen noted in its related coverage.
What is not yet known
Nor do they say whether the drone strike was carried out by Haitian forces, the Salvadoran contingent, or another actor — RNDDH’s report, as accessed by Reuters, documents the attack and Saintil’s injuries, not the operator.
It is also unconfirmed whether his death has triggered the kind of retaliatory violence Nettavisen has documented elsewhere in the current offensive, or whether gangs have named a successor in the Boston area he controlled.
The struggle, as Fils-Aimé put it, “continues with undiminished strength.”
