Despite the surge of violence that continues to rattle El Salvador, the country's National Civil Police (PNC) "will not negotiate nor hold talks with gangs," the force's deputy chief said on Monday.

The police are tasked with preventing and investigating crime and have no business "negotiating with anyone," Howard Cotto told a local radio station, according to EFE. Meanwhile, Cotto defended President Salvador Sánchez Cerén's hardline stance against the country's two powerful street gangs.

"As police we are pleased that the president said there will be no negotiations with criminal organizations (because) our mission is to investigate crime and continue as community police and not get mixed up in negotiations," the officer explained.

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 Central American country. But according to Cotto's account, they are increasingly feeling the pressure of Sánchez's zero-tolerance policies.

"There's a feeling being created that these groups are doing just fine, but our work shows they are in a very tough situation," he insisted.

Nevertheless, El Salvador's homicide rate continues to be among the highest in the world. Last month, the nation of 6 million recorded 677 murders, the highest monthly total since the end of the end of the country's civil war in 1992, the Boston Globe noted.

If the current pace continues, 97 out of every 100,000 residents of El Salvador will be victims of homicide this year, the newspaper calculated. The murder rate in Massachusetts, which has a comparable territory and population, comes to a mere 2 victims per 100,000.

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 insisted, according to Reuters.