SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) – Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele announced on Saturday the deployment of 10,000 members of the security forces to a suburb of San Salvador known to be a stronghold for gangs.
The move is the latest escalation in a crusade against gang violence that began in March, which rights groups say has been marred by wrongful detentions.
“Soyapango is totally surrounded,” the president wrote on Twitter on Saturday, referring to the municipality in the east of the capital region known to be a stronghold of the Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18 gangs.
“8,500 soldiers and 1,500 agents have surrounded the city, while police and army extraction teams are tasked with extracting all the remaining gang members one by one.”
Government officials declined to comment on the deployment.
Footage released by the government showed troops wearing heavy weapons, helmets and body armor, traveling in war vehicles. The municipality has around 300,000 inhabitants and was previously considered impregnable for law enforcement.
Since he launched his anti-gang plan, Bukele has ordered the arrest of more than 50,000 suspected gang members, whom he describes as terrorists and to whom he has denied basic procedural rights.
The plan aims to reduce the Central American country’s homicide rate to less than two a day, after dozens of Salvadorans were killed in a single weekend in March.
(Reporting by Gerardo Arbaiza; editing by Noé Torres and Alexander Villegas and Franklin Paul)
