The surge of violence El Salvador has seen since the end of a 2012 truce between two street gangs has not only led to the homicide rate spiking to its highest level in a decade, but it is also putting the spotlight on the Central American country's powerful anti-gang police unit, the Washington Post reported.

Within the "Unidad Antipandillas" of the National Civil Police, there is "an edgy, confrontational climate that human rights groups say evokes memories of the brutal 1980s civil war," the newspaper editorialized. New laws have made it harder to investigate police violence, and the anti-gang unit has ratcheted up its operations, killing suspected gang members and arresting more than 4,400 this year.

Pedro González, the leader of the force, said nearly the entire country is divvied up between the Mara Salvatrucha and the 18th Street group, both descended from Salvadoran immigrant gangs in Los Angeles, and the two have diverse criminal interests. On the end of the truce, both organizations re-armed and consolidated power, the officer noted.

"They gave the order to attack authorities of the system, the prisons, the prosecutors, police. To protest their decisions. This is why we have this quantity of deaths," he said. "The gangs began to attack, and police have to defend themselves." 

Despite a record 481 homicides in March, Salvadoran President Salvador Sánchez Cerén refused to negotiate with the criminal organizations, which may have as many as 70,000 members in the country of 6 million inhabitants.

Sánchez, a former guerrilla fighter who took office in June, upped the ante by sending gang leaders to maximum-security prisons and encouraged police to use their weapons without fear in the line of duty or in defense of lives, The Associated Press noted.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani earlier this month counseled El Salvador's leaders to forcefully go after two groups in order to quell violence and restore order in the increasingly unstable Central American 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 insisted, according to Reuters.