PHOTOS: Inside World's Most Violent Nation's Secretive Prison

El Salvador -- Huddled together like cattle in a cage no bigger than a shed, some of the men of El Salvador's prison pits have languished in these rancid, disease-ridden holding cells for more than a year. Designed only for temporary 72-hour stays, the sweltering cells, each 12 feet wide and 15 feet tall are crammed with more than 30 people - all veterans of the country's vicious war between the MS-13 and M18 gangs.


The men are suffering frequent health problems and aren't even fed enough.

This Central American nation suffers from constant killings and other types of crimes. Homicide rates in 2011 were 66 per 100,000 inhabitants, according to the United Nations, thus making El Salvador the world's most violent nation.

The Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang and rival Barrio 18 vowed to end the killings and the forced recruitments in exchange for better conditions for incarcerated gang leaders, who run their operations from behind bars.

The government transferred 30 bosses of each gang from the maximum security Zacatecoluca prison to ordinary jails, where they would impart orders to their minions on the street, purportedly to stick with the truce.

The truce was declared in March 2012 between the The MS-13 and Barrio 18. But killings have been rising since late May, with murders averaging 16 per day in early July. The gangs also operate in Guatemala and Honduras.

An estimated 50,000 Salvadorans belong to the street gangs that have terrified citizens. Though meant to stem that violence, the truce does not apply to kidnappings, extortion or drug sales, the core of the criminals' business.

Salvadoran security officials felt powerless to contain the violence fueled by gangs, which formed in the jails of California and spread to Central America as their members were deported by the U.S. In El Salvador, police say, about 10,000 members of Barrio 18 and MS-13 are in jail. The rest are on the streets, and maintain strict control over poor neighborhoods across the country, including inside the nearby town.

Under the truce agreement, gang leaders imprisoned with their members can receive 'intimate visits' in jail, have plasma TVs in the cells and communicate freely with the outside world.

Shortly after agreeing to the truce, the gangs declared schools 'peace zones' and vowed to stop recruiting there.