El Salvador says it foiled a plot to plant bombs on the day of President Bukele's inauguration

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — El Salvador said authorities have broken up a plot to plant bombs around the country to coincide with President Nayib Bukele’s inauguration on Saturday.

The country’s National Police said the plot involved “veterans” of the country’s 1980-1992 civil war, an apparent reference to former leftist guerillas.

Police posted photos of small cylinders of explosives with fuses and sacks of ammonium nitrate on the force’s social media accounts. It said the explosives had been seized in raids, and that the plot supposedly was going to target gasoline stations, supermarkets and government buildings.

It said some of the explosives were found in a raid on a former rebel stronghold, Guazapa, on the outskirts of San Salvador, the capital.

Police blamed a shadowy force it called the “Salvadoran Insurrection Brigade” for the plot, and former congressman José Santos Melara of the leftist FMLN party — formed by former guerrillas — had been detained and was “the one who financed these plans.”

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