SAN SALVADOR, (Reuters) – El Salvador saw the highest number of murders last month since its bloody 12-year civil war ended in 1992 as violence between street gangs grew ever more deadly.
The National Forensics Institute (ILM) said there were 911 homicides in August, with 52 occurring on August 23, making it the deadliest month in nearly a quarter of a century.
From January to August, El Salvador recorded 4,246 homicides, an average of 17.5 a day, and up 67 percent on the same eight-month period in 2014.
Violence has risen steadily in El Salvador since a 2012 truce between the country’s two main gangs, the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and its rival Barrio 18, began to fall apart last year. The truce had helped reduce the Central American nation’s murder rate in mid-2013 to around five per day, a 10-year low.
The country’s police estimates that 80 percent of the homicides are related to purges and score-settling between the country’s gangs.
El Salvador is one of the most violent countries in the world, according to United Nations statistics, with a 2012 murder rate of 41.2 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.
According to some more recent measures, El Salvador has this year overtaken Honduras, which had a 2012 murder rate of 90.4 murders per 100,000 people, as the country with the world’s highest murder rate.