SAN SALVADOR, March 27, 2022 (BSS/AFP) - El Salvadoran President Nayib
Bukele on Saturday urged lawmakers to declare a state of emergency after
authorities arrested dozens of gang members over a recent wave of bloodshed.

   Gang violence has soared in El Salvador in recent days, with more than 20
killings registered since Friday night, government human rights lawyer
Ricardo Martinez reported, while other public security sources said up to 30
homicides may have taken place.

   Police and the military on Saturday arrested several leaders of the Mara
Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang over the deaths.

   In response Bukele asked Congress -- controlled by his ruling party -- to
meet to declare a state of emergency, under which certain freedoms are
curtailed.

   The Salvadoran constitution says that a state of emergency can be put into
place "in cases of war, invasion of territory, rebellion, sedition,
catastrophe, epidemic or other general calamity, or serious disturbances of
public order."

   "Since yesterday we have had a new spike in homicides, something that we
had worked so hard to reduce," Bukele said in a statement posted on Twitter
by Congress president Ernesto Castro.

   "While we fight criminals in the streets, we must try to figure out what
is happening and who is financing this."

   Castro said the country "must let the agents and soldiers do their job and
must defend them from the accusations of those who protect the gang members."

   Bukele asked the prosecutor's office "to be effective with all the cases"
of gang members that it processes, warning he would keep an eye on "judges
who favor criminals."

   Last November El Salvador suffered another spike in homicides that claimed
the lives of some 45 people in three days.

   The Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio-18 gangs, among others, have some 70,000
members in El Salvador, according to authorities, and operate through
homicides, extortion, and drug trafficking.

   The country registered 1,140 murders in 2021 -- an average of 18 deaths
per 100,000 inhabitants -- less than the 1,341 registered the previous year
and the lowest figure since the end of the civil war in 1992, according to
official data.