With more than 8,000 soldiers: Bukele “closes” Soyapango to “remove all the gang members one by one” | International

A contingent of 8,500 soldiers and 1,500 police officers surrounded the city of Soyapango to “remove the gang members one by one,” said the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele. The country has been in a State of Exception since March, which has allowed -according to government figures- to capture 58,000 people linked to criminal gangs.

Some 10,000 members of the Armed Forces and the National Civil Police (PNC) were deployed in the municipality of Soyapango, in El Salvador, to “extract” gang members who have not yet been captured and continue the “war on gangs.”

President Nayib Bukele informed the early hours of this Saturday on his social networks that 8,500 soldiers and 1,500 police officers “have surrounded the city” and that “the extraction teams of the Police and the Army are in charge of removing one by one all the gang members who are still there.”

Bukele, who announced on November 24 that “fences in large cities” will be implemented, pointed out that “ordinary citizens have nothing to fear and can continue to lead their lives as normal”adding that “this is an operation against criminals, not against honest citizens.”

The Presidency, for its part, has reported that security members have settled in popular colonias (neighborhoods) of Soyapango such as La Campanera and Las Margaritasas well as in the central market of that city.

The military and police search vehicles to verify that “no illicit is mobilized” and they register people who circulate in the streets and who mobilize in urban public transport, according to the source.

Soyapango, located just over 12 kilometers from San Salvador, is the second most populated city in the San Salvador Metropolitan Area – made up of 14 municipalities – and the third in the country.

This city, which had been listed as one of the the most dangerous in the country due to the high presence of gang members, it has an approximate population of 258,921 inhabitants.

Bukele: El Salvador under a State of Exception

El Salvador has been under a exception regimewhich completed 8 months of validity and suspends several constitutional rights, after a wave of murders that claimed the lives of more than 80 people in three days.

Under the measure of the State of Exception According to the Salvadoran authorities, more than 58,000 gang members have been captured and people linked to these gangs.

“Fencing off” large cities in El Salvador is part, according to Bukele, of the fifth phase of the Territorial Control Plan, which was launched in 2019 and to which the decrease in homicides is attributed to stopping the sources of financing for the gangs and retake the areas controlled by these gangs.

However, the general population does not know an official document that details the way to address from the State the phenomenon of gangs.

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.