
Inmates at an El Salvador prison were forced together in a jailhouse lockdown as authorities ignored social distancing rules on Saturday.

The Izalco prison inmates were crammed next to each other after President Nayib Bukele ordered a 24-hour lockdown of prisons containing gang members.

President Bukele said their leaders would be sent into solitary confinement after a sudden spike of 22 homicides on Friday.

Inmates at Izalco prison in El Salvador are forced together in a jailhouse lockdown after the country saw 22 murders committed on Friday

President Nayib Bukele ordered the 24-hour lockdown in prisons containing gang leaders, who were put into solitary confinement

Hundreds of prisoners, mostwearing medical masks, line up next to each other on the floor, violating social distancing policy seen in the country at large

Tattooed gang members line up in the prison yard as armed police, also wearing medical masks, watch on. El Salvador has been in lockdown since March 22

President Bukele wrote on Twitter: 'No contact with the outside world. Shops will remain closed and all activities are suspended until further notice.

'Gang leaders will go into solitary confinement.'

Bukele said the 'maximum emergency' lockdown would be enforced while police investigated the 22 murders reported on Friday.

That number was the highest total in a single day since Bukele took office last June, a police spokesman said.

Masked inmates are forced to it skin-to-skin in their boxer shorts after the president announced the prison lockdowns across the country

President Bukele announced the policy on Friday shortly before midnight, writing 'no contact with the outside world. Shops will remain closed and all activities are suspended until further notice'

Murders have fallen significantly under Bukele and the Central American country has in recent months registered several days without any homicides.

Gang-member prisoners are rushed out of their rooms during the maximum emergency ordered by President Bukele

Only a few years ago, El Salvador, which has long been plagued by powerful street gangs known as maras, had the highest homicide rate in the Americas.

Who are El Salvador's gangs? In recent years, more than 100,000 Salvadorans have been displaced from their homes and forced to flee the Central American nation due to the constant menace they have faced from street gangs. Earlier this month, the country's gangs took to enforcing Bukele's state of emergency, using threats and baseball bats to keep people indoors. 'We don't want to see anyone in the street,' a recent recording said. 'If you go out, it better be only to the store, and you better be wearing a mask.' The gang members are mostly members of the Barrio 18 and MS-13 criminal organizations which are made up deportees from the United States. Mara Salvatrucha, popularly known as MS-13, is an international criminal gang that originated in Los Angeles, California, in the 1970s and 1980s. The gang later spread to many parts of the continental United States, Canada, Mexico, and Central America, and is active in urban, suburban, and rural areas. Most members are Central American, Salvadorans in particular. MS-13 is defined by its cruelty, and its rivalry with the 18th Street Gang. As an international gang, its history is closely tied to U.S.–El Salvador relations. Advertisement

However, murders have fallen significantly under Bukele and the Central American country has in recent months registered several days without any homicides.

El Salvador has imposed some of the strictest measures in the Americas to combat the spread of the coronavirus.

The country began a nationwide lockdown on March 22, and has made breaking lockdown laws punishable with imprisonment.

Human rights organisations in the country have campaigned against the stringent measures and have contested some of the detentions that have not allowed people to be seen in front of a court before being jailed.

The country's constitutional court has ruled to release some people detained illegally. But President Nayib Bukele has continued to defend the police's authority to detain people and send them to quarantine.

'The government is insisting on using confinement as a punishment to whoever violates executive orders, which are unsustainable,' Celia Medrano, chief programme officer of San Salvador-based human rights organization Cristosal, told Al Jazeera.

'They have to consider that there is a situation of informal employment for subsistence for many people who are not in conditions to maintain quarantine in their own home.'

The country of 6.4million people has only seen 298 confirmed infections of coronavirus with eight people dying since the start of the pandemic, according to John Hopkins University