El Salvador intensifies ‘war on gangs’ after three police officers killed

Three bare-chested and tattooed gang members were paraded on an El Salvador street on Thursday, after being accused of fatally shooting police officers in an ambush two days earlier.

The killings appear to be the first major backlash to a controversial "war on gangs" by Nayib Bukele, president of El Salvador, with 59,567 gang members jailed in the last three months after a severe security crackdown.

A dramatic image showed the handcuffed suspects kneeling on a dirt road in the La Realidad neighbourhood of Santa Ana, as law enforcement officials posed for photos with the media.

Moments before, the alleged gang members had been arrested by armed police officers who stormed a nearby building.

Authorities say the trio were part of the feared Barrio 18 Sureños (18-Sur), one of three main gangs operating in the small Central American country - which has one of the world's highest murder rates.

They are accused of killing three police officers, two male and one female, who were gunned down in the same city on Tuesday.

The two young men - one covered in tattoos - and a woman lowered their heads in an attempt to conceal their faces from the camera flashes. Behind them, police addressed gathered media from a podium.

The arrests were made as dozens of police officers took part in the funeral of Carlos Mauricio Velásquez, one of the three murdered agents, whose coffin was covered with the country's blue and white flag in Coatepeque, in the town of Santa Ana.

Mr Bukele pledged to intensify his "war on gangs" in the wake of Tuesday’s killings, raising the stakes even higher after the government declared a state of emergency in March, when 62 people were killed in one day as a result of gang violence.

“What is coming to [gang members] is much greater, and they are going to pay dearly for having taken the lives of these three heroes,” Mr Bukele told a rare news conference on Thursday.

The president's supporters said this was evidence that the government and law enforcement is committed to reducing gang crime and cracking down on violence in the streets, while critics argue the heightened police activity and restriction of freedoms under the state of emergency simply denies detainees a fair legal process.