State of emergency declared in El Salvador following day of brutal gang violence

Police stand at alert in San Salvador.
(Image credit: Alex Pena/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

At least 62 people were killed in El Salvador on Saturday during a spree of gang violence, leading the government to declare a state of emergency on Sunday.

Saturday was the deadliest day on record in the country since the end of its civil war 30 years ago, The New York Times reports. The gang members shot and killed people at random on the streets of San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador. The victims included street vendors, people shopping for food, and bus passengers. A man named Marvin told the Times his neighbor was killed while buying bread, and he knows that once the police officers now in the area leave in about two weeks, "everything will return to normal," with gangs once again controlling the streets.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.