Raising An Iron Fist Against El Salvador’s Gangs – NYTimes.com

The images from El Salvador are like a flashback from that country’s brutal civil war: Heavily-armed special troops fanning out through nighttime streets, where corpses lay in pools of blood as bystanders look on. This time, their targets are not guerrilla forces and their civilian sympathizers, but gang members, who have killed so many rivals and civilians alike that the country’s monthly death toll is rising to levels not seen since the end of the 12-year civil war in 1992.