Nearly 10,000 soldiers and police were deployed at dawn on Saturday around the town of Soyapango, on the outskirts of San Salvador, as part of the war against criminal gangs launched in March by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele.
“From now on, the commune of Soyapango is completely surrounded. 8,500 soldiers and 1,500 agents surrounded the city” of 242,000 inhabitants, located east of the capital, wrote President Bukele on his Twitter account.
The president announced on November 23 that towns would be surrounded so that the military could search homes one by one and arrest gang members. Sopayango is the first city where this procedure is applied.
Soldiers and police were stationed from dawn on all the access streets to the city, prohibiting anyone from entering or leaving without being checked. The security forces are in charge of arresting one by one, “all the gang members who are still there”, declared President Bukele.
Some 58,000 suspected members of criminal gangs, the dreaded “maras”, have been arrested in El Salvador since the proclamation at the end of March by President Bukele of the “war” against these gangs which reign terror in the country.
Soyapango has for years been considered an insecure town due to the presence of criminal gangs. But the measures applied by the Bukele government have resulted in “a huge improvement in security”, Mayor Nercy Montano said earlier this week.
Established at the end of March after a wave of 87 assassinations attributed to the “maras”, the state of exception allows arrests without a warrant, raising criticism from human rights organizations.
It was extended by Congress until mid-December.