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. Police and military are now combatting the gangs headon ​and, as part of its socalled "iron fist" strategy, gang members are ​being ​charged​ with a new crime — membership of a terrorist organization.

In part one of our fivepart series, VICE News correspondent Danny Gold headed to El Salvador to investigate what many are now calling a war between gangs and ​the government.

Read "The 18th Street Gang Set Out To Prove It Runs El Salvador's Transport System" http://bit.ly/1Nw5k3G

Read "El Salvador's Gang Truce Is Getting Fragile" http://bit.ly/1lo05fR

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