El Salvador: June 2015 was the most violent month ever

The Central American country of El Salvador has been one of the most violent countries in the world, but its violence has dramatically intensified in recent months according to reports in The Guardian and ABC News. A record was broken in May 2015, with the death toll reaching 635. In June 2015, this record was broken again, hitting 677 homicides, the most killings for a single month since the end of the civil war in 1992. In March and April 2015, 481 and 421 killings were recorded, respectively. The majority of the killings involved drug trafficking gangs and extortion rackets, but innocent civilians were also killed. Dennis Pastoor, persecution analyst for World Watch Research (WWR), comments: "A sad constant in El Salvador"s recent history is violence. Although the nature of the violence has evolved from political violence during the civil war to plain criminal violence, violence in itself is structural. This violence is also a factor of vulnerability for Christians. A Christian widow who fled her home country El Salvador told me recently about her husband who was killed in 2012 for his active involvement in speaking up for human rights because he became a threat for local gangs."