Violence in El Salvador at highest levels since 1980s civil war

May was one of the most violent months in El Salvador since the end of the nation’s civil war in 1992, The Associated Press reports. In a country of just over six million people, 635 homicides were reported last month; June is already set to break that mark.

The increasing instability could be related to the breakdown of a truce between gangs and the government. Last January, President Salvador Sanchez Ceren launched a crackdown on gangs by moving leaders into maximum-security cells, where they were no longer able to run criminal operations remotely. As a result, the streets were turned over to younger, more reckless gang members.

"You take away the mature leadership, and you get a structure that is made up of younger, fanatical people who want to make a name for themselves," Raul Mijango, a former guerrilla and a facilitator of the truce, told AP. "They want war."

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From 1979 to 1992, more than 75,000 civilians died in the Salvadoran Civil War with additional untold numbers “disappearing” across the country at the hands of government forces.