El Salvador murder rate jumps 70 pct in 2015

By Nelson Renteria

SAN SALVADOR, Dec 29 (Reuters) - A surge of El Salvador gang violence this year has pushed up homicides in the country by about 70 percent from 2014, making it a top contender to overtake Honduras as the world's most murderous nation.

Miguel Fortin, head of the National Forensics Institute, said in an interview that 2015 will end with about 6,650 Salvadorans murdered, against 3,912 last year.

With a population of some 6.4 million people, that equates to about 104 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, above the rate last registered in neighboring Honduras, which in 2012 held the distinction of being the most violent nation.

"This has been the most violent year in El Salvador in terms of murders," Fortin said. "It's a real pandemic."

The death toll is the worst registered in El Salvador since the end of a bloody 1980-1992 civil war, which is estimated to have claimed the lives of around 75,000 people.

According to the most recent United Nations Global Study on Homicide, published in 2014, Honduras had 90.4 murders per 100,000 in 2012 when it topped the list. Venezuela had the second highest rate, of 53.7. El Salvador had 41.2.

By 2014, the Honduran rate had fallen below 70, according to the country's president and data from the National Autonomous University of Honduras' Observatory of Violence program.

El Salvador's police blame the spike in murders on gang violence, which included dozens of attacks on police officers as well as brutal assaults on bus drivers in the summer.

Violence has risen steadily in El Salvador since a 2012 truce between the country's two main gangs, the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and its rival Barrio 18, began unraveling last year.