Violent deaths in El Salvador spiked 70% in 2015, figures reveal

At least 6,657 people were violently killed in the Central American country, making last year the most violent since the height of 1983 civil war

El Salvador saw a 70% spike in violent deaths in 2015, making last year the bloodiest since the country’s civil war, according to figures released on Monday by the country’s authorities. 

At least 6,657 people were violently killed in 2015, amid a rise in mass killings and escalating violence between alleged gang members and police in the Central American country.

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The overall murder rate rose to 104 per 100,000 habitants, compared to 1 per 100,000 in the UK and 90 per 100,000 in Venezuela – the second most murderous country in 2015. El Salvador has a population of approximately 6.4 million.

August was the most violent month, with more than 900 killings, including an unprecedented 52 deaths registered in a single day. The population of El Salvador is around 6 million.

Last year’s death toll is the highest recorded since 1983, at the height of a 12-year civil war that pitted a US-backed military dictatorship against leftwing guerrilla groups.

That conflict left an estimated 75,000 people dead, 1m displaced and thousands more disappeared, according to the UN Truth Commission.

A peace deal in 1992 led the guerrillas to disband but never resolved underlying problems of inequality and weak institutions, and the violence has continued.

Authorities routinely blame the current killings on warring street gangs involved in territory disputes and extortion rings. Murders fell by half after the 2012 government negotiated truce between the two biggest street gangs Calle 18 and Mara Salvatrucha 13, and have soared since the pact unravelled in 2014.

But growing evidence has emerged of extrajudicial killings carried out by police against alleged gang members.

Forensic experts have described other cases from 2015 in which alleged armed gang members were actually shot in the back. But investigators are not permitted to carry out independent ballistics investigations in police killings as this remains the jurisdiction of the National Police (PNC).In March, eight unarmed people weresummarily executed by police at the San Blas farm, about 18 miles south of the capital, San Salvador, according toa damning exposé by respected investigative news website El Faro. The scene was tampered with to make it seem that the victims had died in a gun battle as claimed by the police, the investigation found.

Steven Dudley, co-director of InSight Crime, told the Guardian: “The end of the truce caused a series of ruptures in both the gangs and the security forces. The gangs fragmented and the security forces radicalized and have begun using extra-judicial means to deal with the gangs.”

At times in the past year, parts of El Salvador have resembled war zones, as 6,000 soldiers were deployed on the streets alongside 23,000 police officers. Truckloads of masked security forces armed with machine guns patrol carry out house to house searches, looking for gang members.

In August, the capital came to a standstill as terrified workers were forced to stay home after gang leaders orchestrated a forced public transport boycott by killing a dozen bus drivers in response to a crackdown by authorities against organised crime.

A string of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and hand-grenade attacks targeting police and government buildings added to the terror.

The current violence is mostly concentrated in cities and semi-urban areas, but the gangs are rapidly and violently expanding into even the smallest rural communities in order to run extortion rings and control territory.

Celia Medrano, chief programme officer at the human rights group Foundation Cristosal, told the Guardian: “We’re living with the same levels of human drama that we did during the 80s, but the level of insecurity and fear is actually worse because violence is spread across the country.”