PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Reuters) -A contingent of security forces from Guatemala and El Salvador arrived in Haiti's capital on Friday to reinforce a long-delayed United Nations-backed mission tasked with restoring security amid a bloody conflict with armed gangs.
The new arrivals were made up of 75 Guatemalans and eight Salvadorans, a communications officer for the mission said.
The president of Haiti's transitional presidential council, Leslie Voltaire, alongside Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aime and U.S. Ambassador Dennis Hankins, welcomed the troops at Port-au-Prince's airport, Haiti's interim government said in a post on social media.
"They have come to reinforce the Multinational Force in the fight against gangsters and guns in the country," the government said.
The mission is being led by Kenya, which deployed nearly 400 police in the middle of last year, far short of the 1,000 it had promised. The police were later joined by 24 Jamaican personnel and two senior officers from Belize.
Guatemalan President Bernardo Arevalo had in September pledged to send 150 military police, three months after initially pledging in a letter to the U.N. an unnumbered contingent alongside personal equipment.
El Salvador had in August promised 78 soldiers for medical evacuation operations as well as three helicopters - much needed by Haitian security forces contending with mountainous terrain and highways scattered with gang-controlled checkpoints.
(Reporting by Harold Isaac in Port-au-Prince; Writing by Sarah Morland and Brendan O'Boyle; Editing by Leslie Adler and Matthew Lewis)
