On Friday, May 23 El Salvador experienced one of the bloodiest days in recent history, prompting President Mauricio Funes and others to classify the spike in violence as a deliberate, politically motivated campaign. Some 30 homicides occurred in fewer than 24 hours, including a massacre that left six dead, after gunmen boarded a bus outside of San Salvador and fired indiscriminately in what the Attorney General called an act of terrorism.

Funes, who implied the involvement of the right-wing opposition, told the public, “There are sinister minds that are using violence, killing just to kill, as a mechanism to create a climate of unease and uncertainty to wear out the current administration as it exits and also wear out the incoming administration” of President-elect Salvador Sánchez Cerén of the leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) party.

While Funes and others have acknowledged that the decrease in murders achieved by the controversial gang truce is no longer holding, the nature of the homicides does not resemble typical gang violence, and Friday’s numbers greatly supercede the pre-truce murder rates. “It is very notable that the week before the President’s inauguration there are massacres, that there is an extraordinary growth [in violence],” said FMLN spokesman Roberto Lorenzana. “Those who believe that they will intimidate the next government are wrong.”

This is not the first time that elevated violence has been attributed to political interests. The Foundation for the Study of the Application of the Law (FESPAD) found that death squads linked to El Salvador’s right-wing opposition and with ties to organized crime were responsible for increasing homicides in weeks before the nation’s recent presidential elections in order to sow fear in voters.