In response to a spike in murders across the country this week, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele deployed the military to patrol streets across El Salvador, on Thursday.
The military deployment comes after more than 30 homicides in the impoverished Central American nation of 6.5 million people, on Tuesday and Wednesday. Under Bukele, who took office in 2019, the average daily homicide rate had dropped to less than two per day.
‘Our national police and armed forces have been deployed to contain the increase in homicides registered over the last 48 hours,’ Bukele said on Facebook, alongside videos of soldiers patrolling the streets.
It was unclear how many troops would be deployed or how long the operation would last.
According to a government source, the majority of the troops will be stationed in San Salvador’s densely populated areas. Since the end of the country’s civil war in 1992, street gangs have terrorised the country.
The presence of soldiers on the streets will irritate Bukele’s critics, who accuse him of increasing authoritarianism. In recent weeks, Bukele, who is 40 years old, declared himself a ‘dictator’ in his Twitter bio, an apparent joke that did little to calm opposition fears.
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