San Salvador, Feb 22 (EFE).- At least one person was killed and two others were wounded when unidentified assailants threw a grenade at them in San Bartolo, a community located east of San Salvador, El Salvador's National Civilian Police, or PNC, said.
The attack occurred Tuesday and the unidentified victims were taken to a hospital, where one of them was pronounced dead.
The two people wounded in the grenade attack are in serious condition, the PNC said.
The victims were walking down a street in San Bartolo, which is in the city of Ilopango, located about nine kilometers (5.5 miles) east of San Salvador, when they were attacked.
The attack may be linked to a fight between rival gangs, police said.
"We have an average of 13 homicides daily" in El Salvador, with "90 percent of them the product of gangs," Justice and Security Minister David Munguia said recently.
Mara 18 and Mara Salvatrucha are El Salvador's two largest violent youth gangs, known as "maras."
Mara Salvatrucha is a criminal organization that evolved on the streets of Los Angeles during the 1980s, with most of its members young Salvadorans whose parents fled their nation's erstwhile civil war for the United States.
Because many of the gang members were born in El Salvador, they were subject to deportation when rounded up during immigration crackdowns in California in the 1990s.
Sent "home" to a land they barely knew, they formed gangs that spread throughout El Salvador and to neighboring countries in Central America, where membership is now counted in the tens, or even hundreds of thousands, and gang members are engaged in murder, drug dealing, kidnapping and people smuggling.
In addition to those activities, gang members are blamed throughout Central America for a spike in rapes and robberies, and for running protection rackets to extort "taxes" from bus companies and owners of small businesses.
Police estimate that some 10,000 gang members, most of them affiliated either with Mara 18 or Mara Salvatrucha operate in El Salvador.
