San Salvador, Oct 11 (EFE).- At least 4,000 members of El Salvador’s security forces were deployed Wednesday in three densely populated areas of the San Salvador metropolitan area as part of security checks to arrest “remnants” of gang members under the state of emergency.
The Salvadoran president, Nayib Bukele, informed that since early Wednesday morning, “3500 soldiers and 500 police have established three security fences in Popotlán and Valle Verde, in Apopa; and La Campanera, in Soyapango.”
“We continue to carry out the #Extraction phase of the Territorial Control Plan. We will not stop until we capture the last remaining terrorist,” Bukele wrote on his account on the social network X, formerly Twitter.
The security siege in the La Campanera neighborhood follows Tuesday’s killing of a 7-year-old girl, which shocked the Central American country.
The three communities have historically been controlled by members of the country’s two largest gangs, Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18.
As part of the state of exception regime implemented by President Bukele since March 2022 to combat gangs, the “fencing” of major cities is credited by the government with reducing homicides by cutting off gang funding sources and reclaiming areas controlled by these gangs.
The state of exception suspends some constitutional guarantees with unknown duration.
Gangs, a phenomenon considered a legacy of the civil war (1980-1992) and strengthened by the deportation of gang members from the United States, have resisted the security plans implemented by the last four governments. EFE
sa/ics
