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Living In Fear: Gangs of El Salvador (Part 2)

In part two of our five-part series, VICE News correspondent Danny Gold finds outs what El Salvador's street gangs really want, and speaks with those living in fear.

El Salvador is set to eclipse Honduras as the country with the highest homicide rate in the world. There have already been over 5,700 murders this year in a country with a population of just over six million. El Salvador's murder rate is now the highest it's been since the end of the country's brutal civil war — there is on average around one murder an hour.

The staggering death toll follows the breakdown of a truce between powerful, rival gangs and the government. The government's decision to combat the gangs head-on has proved popular. El Salvador's population is afraid to speak out in the face of the murders, intimidation, and extortion committed by the gangs, but the gangs say it is they who represent those living in the poorest parts of the country.

In part two of our five-part series, VICE News correspondent Danny Gold finds outs what the gangs really want, and speaks with those living in fear.

Watch "Waging War: Gangs of El Salvador (Part 1)"

Read "The 18th Street Gang Just Set Out To Prove It Runs El Salvador's Transport System"

Read "El Salvador's Gang Truce Is Getting Fragile"