El Salvador deploys 10,000 troops to gang-run capital suburb By Reuters

SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) – El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele introduced Saturday the deployment of 10,000 safety forces to a suburb of San Salvador identified to be a stronghold for gangs.

The transfer is the newest escalation in a campaign in opposition to gang violence that started in March, which human rights teams say has been marred by unjustified detentions.

“Soyapango is completely surrounded,” the president wrote on Twitter early Saturday, referring to the municipality within the jap a part of the capital area identified to be a stronghold of the Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18 gangs.

“8,500 troopers and 1,500 brokers have surrounded town, whereas extraction groups from the police and the military are tasked with extricating all of the gang members nonetheless there one after the other.”

Authorities representatives declined to touch upon the deployment.

Pictures launched by the federal government confirmed troops carrying heavy weapons, helmets and bulletproof vests, touring in warfare automobiles. The municipality has a inhabitants of about 300,000 and was beforehand thought-about impregnable for legislation enforcement.

Since he started his plan to fight gangs, Bukele has ordered the arrest of greater than 50,000 alleged gang members, whom he describes as terrorists and has denied primary procedural rights to.

The plan goals to cut back the Central American nation’s murder fee to lower than two a day, after dozens of Salvadorans have been killed in a single weekend in March.