Assassins for Sale

Al Jazeera has a story on Los Exterminio, a death squad operating in the department of San Miguel with the intention of ridding the area of alleged gang members.

In this first episode of Latin America Investigates, an uncompromising and compelling new series in which we team up with some of the continent's best investigative journalists, reporter Bryan Avelar and filmmaker Lali Houghton travel to the western province of San Miguel to find out more.

There the notorious MS-13 gang rules the roost through fear and terror. With an estimated 60,000 "soldiers" nationwide - many of them bearing distinctive tattoos to mark their allegiance - and more than half a million affiliates, from lookouts to family members, MS-13 claims to both protect its own and look after the interests of the economically marginalised. 

However the reality for the public is a seemingly never-ending cycle of violence, intimidation, extortion, kidnap and murder. Most people are too terrified to stand against them or even speak out, let alone help the police. 

But now a vigilante death squad, called Los Exterminio, is fighting back. Accredited with at least 40 murders of gang members, it first came to prominence last summer when seven bodies were found on a country road. The dead men had all been executed with a bullet to the head and all were thought to have belonged to MS-13. 

So what's driven the shadowy figures who operate under Los Exterminio's banner to take such drastic action? And what truth is there to rumours that they are funded by local businessmen and benefit from a collaborative - if secret - relationship with the police?

Homicides are down approximately 20% in El Salvador this year. The decrease has come, in part, because of the government's full-frontal assault against gangs. The more confrontational policy has resulted in allegations that security forces have committed extrajudicial executions of alleged gang members and, perhaps in response, that gang members have carried out targeted attacks against security force personnel, both on and off duty.

It's not a long-term solution to the violence in El Salvador, but it seems to be what the government and the people want.