In the fight against gang crime in El Salvador, some 2,000 soldiers and police surrounded two neighborhoods in the capital, San Salvador. “More than 1,000 soldiers and 130 police officers” would clear “the remaining criminals” from the “completely surrounded” Tutunichapa district of San Salvador, President Nayib Bukele announced on Twitter on Saturday.
In another operation in the Granjita district, at night, the same number of soldiers were deployed, the president said on Twitter.
Footage released by the President’s Office on Saturday showed heavily armed soldiers entering Tutunichapa. Defense Minister René Merino later wrote on Twitter that 23 people had been arrested in the district so far. He did not say whether they were gang members or drug dealers. Tutunichapa and Granjita are notorious drug hubs.
“All terrorists, drug dealers and gang members” would be “removed from the area,” President Bukele wrote in another tweet, adding that the neighborhood was a “bastion of crime” until recently.
It was the third major operation this month in the Central American country. In early December, Bukele sent around 10,000 emergency services to Soyapango, the country’s third-largest city, in a first large-scale operation. He had previously announced that, in the future, entire cities would be sealed off so that soldiers and police could go from house to house looking for gang members.
More than 58,000 suspected gang members have been arrested in El Salvador since a state of emergency was declared in March. Parliament has extended the state of emergency several times, most recently until mid-December. Human rights organizations criticize the state of emergency, which, among other things, allows detention without a judicial decision, as a drastic restriction of fundamental rights.
Despite these criticisms, Parliament extended the state of emergency for another month on Thursday. According to a poll by the Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) released in October, more than 75% of the population supports the imposition of the state of emergency, and nine out of ten Salvadorans believe that Bukele’s strategy has reduced crime.