Twenty or more killed around El Salvador in crime re-surge

A four-year-old girl was one of 20 or more people killed around El Salvador over 1-3 July, in a crime surge recalling the violence that preceded the 2012 ceasefire between the country's Mara street gangs. Salvadorean media gave prominent coverage to the shooting death of the girl - hit by a bullet apparently aimed at her mother, while she played in a front yard or inside her house in the district of Jucuapa east of the capital. She was identified as possibly the daughter of a former gang member living in the United States, the Salvadorean daily El Mundo reported. The daily attributed territorial rivalries between street gangs for the surge in crimes around the country, and observed nobody had yet been arrested by 2 July. The website elsalvador.com counted at least eight killings from late 2 July to early 3 July; it showed in a linear graph a sharp rise in killings in the country after April 2013, about a year after the start of a gangs ceasefire officials had many times celebrated as having halved murder rates within months. The graph showed that the country witnessed a peak in murders at about 200 a month in early January 2013, this falling to around 140 in early April, then rising to between 175-7 in early May and to over 180 in early June. Readers' comments on the website expressed the public's outrage, as some urged the imposition of death sentences and others that the army be sent to fight the Mara gangs. The Public Security and Justice Minister Ricardo Perdomo recently told a television programme that the average daily murder rate for the period 1 January-26 June was 5.7, down from 8.7 for the same period in 2012, the Ministry website reported on 26 June. Mr Perdomo said there were 541 fewer murders in this period compared to the same months in 2012, though the report did not give a number.