At least 125 people have been murdered in El Salvador in the last three days as the Central American nation's gang-fueled violence seems to further spin out of control.

The director of the country's National Civil Police (PNC), Howard Cotto, said that 40 individuals were killed on Sunday, 42 on Monday and 43 on Tuesday, The Associated Press reported. Justice and Public Security Minister Benito Lara said El Salvador is confronting a "complicated situation."

Observers say the spike in homicides is largely due to the collapse of a gang truce, which has led to rampant gang-on-gang violence, as well as attacks on police and common citizens.

Authorities, meanwhile, say the murders are part of an attempt by criminals to put pressure on the government, Agence France-Presse noted. 

"They want to exert some pressure and for the government to grant some of the things they are asking for," Lara said.

The rival Mara Salvatrucha and 18th Street groups, both of which descended from Salvadoran immigrant gangs in Los Angeles, are believed to have as many as 70,000 members across the country. The groups seem to have deliberately ratcheted up violence as a reaction to President Salvador Sánchez Cerén's zero-tolerance policies.

Sánchez, who took office 14 months ago, refuses to negotiate with the groups and last year upped the ante by sending gang leaders to maximum-security prisons and encouraging police to use their weapons without fear in the line of duty or in defense of lives.

The criminals, in turn, have taken to purposefully targeting police, and the PNC's Mauricio Ramírez told the AP that he had no doubt that the violence was politically motivated.

"The gangs deliberately want to run up the numbers, deliberately increase the figures to try to pressure, to try to corner the institutions and the entire country," Ramírez said.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani in May counseled El Salvador's leaders to forcefully go after the two gangs in order to quell violence and restore order in the increasingly unstable country. 

"The biggest problem in New York was the mafia and then drug traffickers, but here it's two major gangs, and these two gangs need to be annihilated," Giuliani said, according to Reuters.