Women in El Salvador are reportedly rushing to salons to dye their hair brown in an attempt to stay alive from gang violence, the Associated Press reports.

El Salvador is currently in the midst of its most violent month since its civil war in the 1980s — there were 653 homicides in May, and June is reportedly going to surpass that number — and now rumors are circulating that only gang members' girlfriends are allowed to wear the colors red and yellow and have blonde and red hair. And women who defy that order are at risk for being killed.

Although gangs have issued statements denying the rumors, Salvadoran women aren't taking any chances. "You don't wait for clarification," Maria Jose Estrada told the AP. "These people are crazy, and they will kill you."

Claudia Castellanos, who owns a beauty salon, told the AP that she knows of at least one woman who's been attacked for wearing yellow. (Honduran women have been reporting the same thing, with gangs saying that only certain gang members' girlfriends are allowed to have blonde hair, the Honduran Daily reports.)

Police have attributed the uptick in violence to the breakdown of a 2013 truce between the government and the country's two largest gangs, wherein the government agreed to move gang leaders to minimum-security prisons and improve prison conditions. In exchange, gang leaders agreed to tell their subordinates outside of prison to put a halt to the violence, according to The New York Times.

The police now argue that while the homicide rate initially fell, the truce only gave the gangs time to strengthen their groups and get more weapons. In recent months, Salvadoran president Salvador Sanchez Ceren has made a point of moving high-profile gang leaders back to maximum-security prisons.

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