El Salvador says 6,000 security forces deployed against gangs

President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador declared on Sunday that 6,000 armed troops and law enforcement personnel had been sent to the country’s north to apprehend gang members following the murders of two individuals.

In March 2022, Bukele declared a state of emergency that suspended certain civil freedoms, including the requirement for arrest warrants. This marked the beginning of his war on gangs.

Government agents have apprehended around 75,000 alleged criminals under the clause, many of whom are being held captive in the biggest jail in the Americas, which Bukele had custom-built. Approximately 7,000 were later released.

“We are not going to stop until we eradicate what little remains of the gangs,” Bukele warned on social media platform X, which included a video of heavily armed troops parading a pair of captured men.

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He added that 5,000 soldiers and 1,000 police officers had “surrounded” the districts of San Jose Cancasque, San Antonio Los Ranchos, Potonico and San Isidro Labrador.

Bukele said the action was a response to two homicides in the country’s north, about 90 kilometers (56 miles) north of capital San Salvador, and that two “culprits” from the Surenos faction of the 18th Street gang had been captured.

“We will completely clean the area, we will extract every last remnant of gangs,” Defence Minister Rene Francis Merino Monroy said in a separate post on X.

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Bukele was re-elected with more than 80 percent of the vote in February and is widely credited with slashing homicides to the lowest rate in three decades.

His tactics have been praised by crime-weary authorities from Ecuador to Argentina, but criticized by rights activists who argue innocent people have been swept up in the anti-crime campaign.