President Nayib Bukele has declared that around 10,000 troops have surrounded the city of Soyapango in El Salvador as part of a sweeping crackdown on gangs.
Special forces have been scouring residences for gang members and have shut all highways going into the city.
Officers have also been stopping and examining the identification documents of everyone seeking to exit the city.
The operation is part of a sweeping crackdown on gangs in response to this year’s spike in violence.
The minister of justice stated that twelve persons had been arrested yet.
Soyapango is one of the largest cities in El Salvador and is home to around 290,000 inhabitants. The city, located just 13 kilometers (8 miles) west of the capital San Salvador, has a long history of gang violence.
“At this time, the municipality of Soyapango is surrounded,” tweeted President Bukele. Teams from the police and the military are entrusted with extracting all remaining gang members one by one.
He said that average individuals “have nothing to worry about” and that the crackdown was “an operation against criminals, not against law-abiding citizens.”
The government released photographs of highly armed troops wearing body armor and holding assault rifles outside of the city.
Guadalupe Perez, a resident, told the AFP news agency that the raid was a pleasant surprise.
The 53-year-old said, “They search you and ask for your identification to verify where you reside, but that’s great – it’s all for our safety.”
Since Mr. Bukele declared a state of emergency at the end of March, officials in the country of 6.5 million have imprisoned more than 58 thousand individuals.
Rights groups have criticized the harsh nature of the crackdown, claiming that the laws allowing police to detain people without a warrant have resulted in arbitrary detentions.
However, Mr. Bukele’s defenders argue that the crackdown is justified because gangs were responsible for 62 deaths on a single day on March 26.
According to a recent survey conducted by the University of Central America (UCA), 75.9 percent of Salvadorans support the state of emergency.
