El Salvador closed 2024 with a record low 114 homicides, continuing notable security gains under a second full year of a state of emergency that has given the government extraordinary powers and curtailed some fundamental rights.
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador -- El Salvador closed 2024 with a record low 114 homicides, continuing notable security gains under a second full year of a state of emergency that has given the government extraordinary powers and curtailed some fundamental rights.
Not all nations had published their 2024 annual homicide totals, but the 1.9 homicides per 100,000 in population that Bukele said had been achieved would put it below what any Latin American country had reported in 2023.
El Salvador’s official total does not include the killings of five suspected gang members in shootouts with security forces.
In March 2022, El Salvador’s notoriously powerful street gangs killed 62 people in a matter of hours.
For years, many Salvadorans lived in fear of the gangs that controlled swaths of the country, extorting, killing and forcibly recruiting.
In 2015, El Salvador had 6,656 homicides, making it one of the world’s deadliest countries. »
