El Salvador has declared a prison emergency as the country’s murder rate spiked from zero to 22 in just one day during lockdown.
President Nayib Bukele has imposed a 24-hour lockdown in prisons, meaning inmates were crammed tightly together in one room sitting one behind the other.
Prisoners can be seen wearing just their pants with many using face masks, despite their heads being just inches away from each other, The Mirror reports.
Gang leaders are to be sent into solitary confinement in a bid to tackle to murder increase across the country, President Bukele has said.
He wrote on Twitter: "No contact with the outside world. Shops will remain closed and all activities are suspended until further notice.
"Gang leaders will go into solitary confinement."
The 22 murders are the highest recorded in a single day since June 2019, when the president took office.
He later said: "The gangs are taking advantage of the fact that almost all of our public forces are controlling the pandemic.
"We will have to move resources to combat them."
On Sunday, the president authorised the use of "lethal force" by police officers to "defend the population and fight the country's gangs".
He tweeted: "The use of lethal force is authorised for self-defense or for the defense of the lives of Salvadorans."
El Salvador, in Central America, has one of the strictest lockdowns in the area to battle the coronavirus.
On March 22, the country began a nationwide lockdown, a day before the UK.
It has said that anyone breaking the strict measures will go to prison.
According to the latest figures, El Salvador, which has 6.4million people has only seen 298 confirmed infections.
It has recorded eight deaths from covid-19, according to John Hopkins University.
Human rights organisations have criticised sending those breaching lockdown rules to prison without the chance of going to court first.
Al Jazeera reports that the country's constitutional court has ruled to release some people detained illegally.
But President Nayib Bukele has continued to defend the police's authority to detain people and send them to quarantine.
