San Salvador (AFP) - El Salvador on Wednesday deployed a new, heavily armed elite force of soldiers and police to hunt down gangs that have turned the country into one of the world's deadliest.

The unit, made up of 600 army commandos and 400 police officers with assault rifles, helicopters and armored trucks with guns, is the sharp edge of a strong-arm campaign by the government to curb the gangs.

"We are going to go after them in the countryside and in the city," Vice President Oscar Ortiz said.

"We are going to hit those who try to create disorder."

Fed with intelligence, the force's mission is to "detect the 100 main bosses who are not yet detained with the aim of detaining them and neutralizing their activity of leading their criminal organizations," police chief Howard Cotto told a news conference.

The Central American country is ranked as the most dangerous nation not at war because of a murder rate of 104 per 100,000 inhabitants. There are around 22 murders a day.

Most of the bloodshed is blamed on the vicious gangs, which were imported into the country by Salvadoran members deported from the United States in the 1990s.

El Salvador has in recent weeks stepped up its fight against the gangs. Three weeks ago it introduced a new law isolating jailed crime bosses by limiting their movements and family visits, and blocking cellphone signals from their prisons.

Several of the main gangs declared a halt to murders in a bid to blunt the authorities' campaign against them, but the government has ignored that.

"We cannot yield to those who scorn life. We cannot yield to those who scorn the law and who, irrationally, every day, take the lives of children, of youths, of families," Ortiz said.

The United States is working to give El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala -- collectively known as the "Northern Triangle" -- $750 million in aid to help prevent many there fleeing violence and poverty and trying to reach America.

El Salvador's new Special Reaction Force is based in barracks in northeastern San Salvador, a facility that housed the notorious -- and later banned -- National Guard during the country's 1980-1992 civil war.

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It will in particular go after gang members trying to take refuge in remote rural areas or in mountains, officials said.

But it will also be available for urban operations.

There are an estimated 70,000 gang members in El Salvador, around 20 percent of whom are behind bars.