El Salvador deploys 10,000 troops to gang-run capital suburb By Reuters
© Reuters. Troops wander in the suburb of Soyapango, just after El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele declared the deployment of 10,000 security forces to the troubled area which for several years has been regarded a stronghold of the violent Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18 gangs
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SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) – El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele announced Saturday the deployment of 10,000 stability forces to a suburb of San Salvador known to be a stronghold for gangs.
The shift is the hottest escalation in a campaign from gang violence that began in March, which human legal rights groups say has been marred by unjustified detentions.
“Soyapango is fully surrounded,” the president wrote on Twitter early Saturday, referring to the municipality in the jap part of the money area identified to be a stronghold of the Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18 gangs.
“8,500 troopers and 1,500 brokers have surrounded the metropolis, even though extraction groups from the law enforcement and the army are tasked with extricating all the gang users even now there a person by 1.”
Governing administration representatives declined to comment on the deployment.
Pictures released by the authorities confirmed troops carrying large weapons, helmets and bulletproof vests, traveling in war automobiles. The municipality has a population of about 300,000 and was beforehand viewed as impregnable for law enforcement.
Considering that he started his system to battle gangs, Bukele has ordered the arrest of a lot more than 50,000 alleged gang users, whom he describes as terrorists and has denied basic procedural legal rights to.
The system aims to lessen the Central American country’s murder amount to significantly less than two a working day, after dozens of Salvadorans had been killed in a one weekend in March.