San Salvador, Dec. 5 — Some 10,800 people have disappeared in El Salvador since 2010 due to violence attributed to gangs. This is 8,000 more than those officially registered as disappeared during the country’s civil war that lasted between 1980 and 1992. None of these have been reported by police as “found.”

The year in which the greatest number of Salvadorans were reported as missing was 2014, with a total of 2,090, which coincides with the rupture of the 2012 truce between the gangs and the Government of former President Mauricio Funes (2009- 2014), according to police data to which EFE had access yesterday.

According to Funes, during the non-aggression pact between gangs, the monthly average of violent deaths decreased from 340 to 160, and the daily count fell from 15 to 5.

However, prosecutor general Douglas Meléndez said early last May that during the truce murders were not reduced, but rather gangs buried the bodies of their victims in clandestine cemeteries.

The prosecutor’s thesis is supported by police data, since in 2012 and 2013 the relationship between homicides and disappearances is the reverse: during the period when the number of violent deaths fell, the number of disappeared increased.

In 2012, there was a 40.6 percent decrease in murders and a 39.4 percent increase in disappearances, while in 2013 there was a drop of 3.1 percent in violent deaths and a rise of 18.19 percent in missing people.

By 2015 the phenomenon was reversed: the murders soared 70.39 percent and the number of disappeared increased by just 6.26 percent.

An investigation by the recently published Central American Research and Development and Social Change Institute (Incide) concludes that gangs intensified their pattern of violence between 2010 and 2015 because of the greater territorial control they obtained under the truce.

Different analysts point out that during this stage, the “maras” consolidated their local leadership and expanded their territory during the implementation of “sanctuaries” for gang members in which the Government invested in social programs and security forces decreased their operations.

In fewer than seven years, a total of 3,705 women and 7,022 men disappeared.

People between the ages of 18 and 30 were the ones that disappeared the most for 34.96 percent of the cases, followed by children and adolescents for over 30 percent of disappearances.

On different occasions EFE has asked the Salvadoran Police Information and Response Office (OIR) for information on the number of people who were reported as missing and were later found, but the institution has never provided such data.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office forensic anthropologist, Israel Ticas, one of the most renowned in the country, has pointed out that if a person spends more than eight days missing there is a high probability that he or she has been killed. EFE