SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) – No one was murdered in El Salvador on Saturday, officials said, in what was the first homicide-free day in nearly three years for the Central American country plagued by violent drug gangs.

“After years when the number of murders reached alarming levels of up to 18 per day, we saw not one homicide in the country,” President Mauricio Funes said in a statement released on Sunday. The murder-free day was the first recorded since leftist Funes took office in June 2009.

At the beginning of Funes’ term, the country had an average of 12 murders a day, but that tally climbed closer to 18 per day in early 2012.

Rival gangs operating in El Salvador called a truce last month and bloodshed between the country’s two most powerful gangs, Mara Salvatrucha and gang Mara 18, has abated.

According to United Nations data, El Salvador has recently tallied a homicide rate of 66 per 100,000 people, one of the highest in the world.

Much of that violence is blamed on Mexican drug cartels that use the country as a transit point.

Funes, who attended this weekend’s Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, credited his government’s security measures for the drop in violence.

SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) – Rival gangs operating in El Salvador have called a truce as the Central American country confronts a plague of violent crime, according to a statement issued on Friday by the gangs and endorsed by local Roman Catholic church leaders.

The document, signed by representatives of the country’s two most powerful gangs, Mara Salvatrucha and gang Mara 18, was delivered to various media and has been endorsed by the Salvadoran Catholic Church, local church leaders said.

Local media reports based on interviews with gang leaders say the truce began this week.

The gangs have been in a period of “reflection” since last year as they considered the toll of crime in the country, according to the statement.

Rising violence, much of it linked to local gangs, fueled a 9 percent jump in the country’s murder rate last year.

According to data published by the United Nations, El Salvador has a homicide rate of 66 per 100,000 people, one of the highest in the world.

Much of that violence is blamed on Mexican drug cartels that use the country as a transit point.

SAN SALVADOR/TORONTO, March 23 (Reuters) – The parent of an aircraft maintenance company spun off by Air Canada is expanding in El Salvador even as its Canadian arm liquidates its assets after terminating more than 2,600 employees.

Aveos, which shut its doors in Canada earlier this week, has corporate ties with El Salvador’s Aeroman, with Aero Technical Support & Services Holdings, a closely held company domiciled in Luxembourg, owning both of them.

While Aveos may count the Salvadoran unit as part of its network, the two operations are independent of each other, said Ernesto Ruiz, chief executive of Aeroman.

“Our board of directors made the decision to continue the expansion in El Salvador,” Ruiz said in an interview with Reuters. “At this time we are about to complete construction on hangar No. 4, which will have capacity for three airplanes and which should be operational by early April.”

In a letter to its roughly 1,800 workers in the tiny Central American country, Aeroman said Aveos’ financial plight in Canada would have no effect on their jobs in El Salvador.

Aveos filed for creditor protection in Canada on Monday, but neither Aveos nor its lawyers in Canada have so far said what impact, if any, this would have on the El Salvador operations.

Both Air Canada and Aveos, once the airline’s own in-house maintenance unit, have faced harsh criticism after mass layoffs in Montreal, Vancouver, Winnipeg and other Canadian cities.

SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) – El Salvador’s ruling leftists suffered a bruising defeat in congressional elections, hurt by frustration with rampant violence in the small, impoverished Central American nation, preliminary results showed on Monday.

The opposition conservative Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) was on course to take over as the biggest party in Congress, adding 15 seats for a total of 33 out of 84, with almost all of Sunday’s voting counted by the country’s supreme electoral tribunal.

The ruling Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN, lost four congressional seats to stand at 31 seats, dealing a blow to President Mauricio Funes, a former journalist who in 2009 ended two decades of rule by the ARENA party.

Conservatives also ousted the FMLN from important strongholds, winning key mayoral races that included the major San Salvador suburbs of Soyapango and Mejicanos.

“This is a historic victory,” said Norman Quijano, who was re-elected as mayor of the capital. “We have a majority in the assembly and we are going to turn the country around.”

The result is likely to make the FMLN dependent on the support of the right-wing Great Alliance for National Unity or GANA, a party formed by dissidents from ARENA during the last legislature, which cost ARENA more than a dozen seats.

GANA, which won 11 seats in the assembly – five seats fewer than it had – has helped the Funes government already.

SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) – El Salvador on Tuesday appointed a military man to run the Ministry of Security for the first time since the end of a bloody 1980-1992 civil war which deeply polarized the Central American nation.

Leftist President Mauricio Funes picked retired general David Munguia for the job despite opposition from members of his own party, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), which fought the military during the war.

The war claimed around 75,000 lives, and the ministry which controls the police had remained in civilian hands since the peace accords of 1992 which ended the conflict.

Munguia, seen as a moderate member of the armed forces who had hitherto served as Funes’ defense minister, replaces Manuel Melgar, an ex-leftist guerrilla commander from the war who resigned earlier this month for reasons that are unclear.

“David Munguia is a man I have the utmost faith in, a retired soldier who deserves recognition from civil society for his performance in the armed forces during the 2-1/2 years he has been working under my mandate,” Funes said.

El Salvador has struggled to contain rampant lawlessness caused by street gangs often working for Mexican drug cartels.

The violence has given the coffee and sugar exporting nation a homicide rate of 66 per 100,000 inhabitants – the second highest in the world after neighboring Honduras, according to United Nations figures published last month.

SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) – The death toll from torrential rains in Central America over the past week has almost doubled since Saturday, with a further 25 lives lost in El Salvador, authorities said on Sunday.

A tropical depression that swept in from the Pacific on Wednesday caused mudslides and chaos on roads and forced thousands of people to abandon their homes in the chain of countries between Mexico and South America, killing 81 so far.

On Saturday, the death toll stood at 45 in the region, home to some of the poorest countries in the Americas. El Salvador, a nation of some 6 million, was the worst affected overnight, with accidents pushing up the number of victims there to 32.

“The situation has got even worse, it’s still raining heavily in various parts of the country,” El Salvador’s president, Mauricio Funes, said in an address late on Sunday,

Many of those killed in the country died in mudslides, an official from local emergency services said.

The rainfall was so strong in the area around the municipality of Ciudad Arce, northwest of San Salvador, that rescue operations had to be suspended for a time.

Guatemala also reported more dead, bringing its death toll to 28, while the total rose to 13 in Honduras. At least eight people have also died in Nicaragua. No deaths were reported in Costa Rica, though dozens of families have been evacuated.

SAN SALVADOR, Nov 9 (Reuters) – Hurricane Ida headed toward oil and gas facilities in the central Gulf of Mexico on Monday on a path to the U.S. Gulf Coast after killing 124 people in El Salvador following floods and mudslides. U.S. oil companies were shutting production and evacuating workers from the Gulf in the face of Ida, a Category 2 storm with top sustained winds near 105 mph (165 kph). Oil rose more than $1 to above $78 a barrel on Monday on fears of the hurricane. [ID:nSP381311] The National Hurricane Center said Ida was expected to weaken but would likely remain a hurricane as it approached the northern Gulf Coast on Monday night or early on Tuesday. It was forecast to hit somewhere between Louisiana and Florida. Several large producers shut down some oil and gas production as a precautionary measure. The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, the only terminal in the United States capable of handling the largest tankers, said it would stop unloading ships due to stormy seas. [ID:nL9333753] A quarter of U.S. oil and 15 percent of its natural gas are produced from fields in the Gulf and the coast is home to 40 percent of the nation’s refining capacity. In El Salvador, rivers burst their banks and hillsides collapsed under relentless rains triggered by Ida’s passage, cutting off parts of the mountainous interior from the rest of the country. El Salvador’s government said 124 people were killed as mudslides and floods swept away rudimentary houses. The bulk of the Central American country’s coffee is grown in areas far from the worst affects of the flooding but the national coffee association had no estimate of potential damage to the harvest. LOUISIANA STATE OF EMERGENCY The Miami-based hurricane center set a hurricane warning from Pascagoula, Mississippi, to Indian Pass, Florida, meaning hurricane conditions could be expected in the area within 24 hours. A tropical storm warning was in effect for parts of Louisiana and Mississippi, including the city of New Orleans, which is still recovering from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal declared a state of emergency on Sunday, allowing the government to mobilize troops and rescue workers. If Ida makes landfall in Louisiana, it would be the first storm to strike the state since Hurricane Gustav came ashore in September 2008. At 1 a.m. EST (0600 GMT), Ida was 340 miles (547 km) south-southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River and was moving north-northwest near 15 mph (24 kph), the hurricane center said. Ida was expected to turn toward the north and move faster toward the Gulf Coast before veering off to the northeast on Tuesday. Ida swept past the Mexican resort of Cancun on Sunday, doing little damage to the city. Ida first became a hurricane on Thursday off the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua, where heavy rains forced more than 5,000 people into shelters. The country’s coffee crop was not directly affected by the storm, according to the local coffee council. (Additional reporting by Jose Cortazar and Michael O’Boyle in Cancun, Ivan Castro in Managua and Erwin Seba in Houston; Writing by Peter Cooney; Editing by Alison Williams)

SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) – Hurricane Ida roared through the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday, where important oil fields are located, after triggering floods and mudslides that killed 124 people in El Salvador.Ida was expected to weaken gradually on Monday as it heads toward some of the oil and gas production facilities in the central Gulf, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.The storm reached hurricane force again late on Saturday and strengthened to a Category 2 storm on Sunday with sustained winds of near 105 mph, the Miami-based hurricane center said in its 10 p.m. EST (0300 GMT) advisory.Some energy companies in the Gulf of Mexico were evacuating workers from offshore platforms and several large producers shut down some oil and gas production as a precautionary measure.The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, the only terminal in the United States capable of handling the largest tankers, said it would stop unloading ships due to stormy seas.A quarter of U.S. oil and 15 percent of its natural gas are produced from fields in the Gulf and the coast is home to 40 percent of the nation’s refining capacity.In El Salvador, rivers burst their banks and hillsides collapsed under relentless rains triggered by Ida’s passage, cutting off parts of the mountainous interior from the rest of the country.El Salvador’s government said 124 people were killed as mudslides and floods swept away rudimentary houses.The bulk of the Central American country’s coffee is grown in areas far from the worst affects of the flooding but the national coffee association had no estimate of potential damage to the harvest.The hurricane center set a hurricane warning from Pascagoula, Mississippi, to Indian Pass, Florida, meaning hurricane conditions could be expected in the area within 24 hours.A tropical storm warning was in effect for parts of Louisiana and Mississippi including the city of New Orleans, which is still recovering from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.LOUISIANA PREPARESLouisiana Governor Bobby Jindal declared a state of emergency on Sunday, allowing the government to mobilize troops and rescue workers.If Ida makes landfall in Louisiana it would be the first storm to strike the state since Hurricane Gustav came ashore in September 2008.As of 10 p.m. EST (0300 GMT), Ida was 400 miles south-southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River and was moving north-northwest near 14 mph, the hurricane center said. Ida was expected to turn toward the north and move faster toward the Gulf Coast before veering off to the northeast late on Monday.Ida swept past the Mexican resort of Cancun on Sunday, doing little damage to the city.About 1,000 people were evacuated from Mexico’s Holbox Island, an isolated fishing community and sanctuary for thousands of flamingos and other exotic birds located northwest of Cancun.Ida first became a hurricane on Thursday off the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua, where heavy rains forced more than 5,000 people into shelters.The country’s coffee crop was not directly affected by the storm, according to the local coffee council.(Additional reporting by Jose Cortazar in Cancun, Nelson Renteria in San Salvador, Ivan Castro in Managua and Erwin Seba in Houston; Writing by Robert Campbell; Editing by Eric Beech)

SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) – At least 91 people died and another 60 or more are missing after floods and mudslides in El Salvador triggered by Hurricane Ida, the government said on Sunday.

Interior Minister Humberto Centeno called it “a tragedy” and said rescue workers were still struggling to reach some of the worst affected areas.

“Up until noon there have been, sadly, 91 deaths in all five (affected) provinces. There are 60 people missing in just the province of San Vicente,” Centeno told a news conference.

Water and telephone services were cut off in many parts of the country.

Part of the Chinchontepec volcano in San Vicente province collapsed in the rain and buried homes in the village of Verapaz under thousands of tonnes of mud and rock.

Rescue workers in helicopters and boats tried to reach villagers cut off by mudslides that buried houses in the lakeside town southeast of the capital.

“It was incredible. Nothing like this has ever happened here before today,” said Jesus Rodriguez, whose home was swept away by a mudslide after he took his family to a relative’s house in a safer district.

MEXICO CITY/SAN SALVADOR, Oct 7 (Reuters) – Latin American airlines Avianca and TACA said on Wednesday they will merge and AeroMexico said it is looking at deals with rivals as carriers around the world struggle with a deep downturn.

In a deal worth $3 billion in combined annual sales, El Salvador-based TACA and Colombia’s Avianca said they will join operations to cut costs and bolster their clout in the region.

Avianca’s shareholders will control two thirds of the new company, with the rest in the hands of TACA owners, TACA chief executive Roberto Kriete told reporters in San Salvador.

Underscoring the damage the global economic slump has done to the airline industry, AeroMexico, one of Mexico’s two main carriers, said it is interested in stock deals with local and foreign players to help improve efficiency.

“What we are analyzing, beyond commercial alliances, are investment alliances where it isn’t a merger but stock stakes between two groups,” AeroMexico Chief Executive Andres Conesa told reporters at an event in Mexico City.

Hit by the economic slowdown, airlines around the world are struggling with weak demand and volatile fuel prices, although some carriers have said they see early signs of improvement.

In Europe, Aer Lingus <AERL.I> said on Wednesday it will ax nearly one in five jobs and cut salaries to secure its survival, a day after British Airways <BAY.L> announced plans to cut the equivalent of 1,700 cabin crew. [ID:nL7615726]