SAN SALVADOR, Jan 6 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Homicides in El Salvador dropped sharply in 2025 as a result of a government crackdown on gangs, the Central American country’s security minister said.
The murder rate fell to 1.3 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants last year, compared with 1.9 in 2024, according to Gustavo Villatoro, the minister of Justice and Security.
In addition, the 82 homicides committed in 2025 were all “resolved,” the official told reporters.
These figures allow the government to state that “El Salvador is the safest country in the Western Hemisphere,” Villatoro asserted.
Since March 2022, the administration of President Nayib Bukele has carried out an offensive against once-powerful street gangs under a state of emergency.
NGOs have criticized the crackdown for alleged human rights violations.
Under the emergency, Salvadoran authorities can conduct warrantless arrests which, rights groups say, have led to abuses.
In 2015, the national homicide rate reached 106 cases per 100,000 inhabitants — then, El Salvador was considered one of the most violent countries in the world, outside of war zones.
El Salvador started keeping records on homicides in 1992, at the end of its 12-year civil war.
The minister said that, throughout last year, the authorities managed to “neutralize and continue defeating” the gangs, which Villatoro described as the country’s greatest enemy.
Under the emergency, nearly 91,000 suspected gang members have been arrested, although about 8,000 were released after being deemed innocent, according to official figures.
At the end of last year, the NGO Humanitarian Legal Aid reported that 473 people had died in prison, many of them without a judge ever determining whether they were guilty.
According to Bukele, the “maras,” or gangs, before the crackdown had controlled 80 per cent of the national territory and financed themselves by extorting thousands of Salvadorans, mainly merchants and transport workers.
Those who didn’t pay were killed, the government says. — NNN-AGENCIES