SAN SALVADOR – Four day laborers were slain Thursday in a rural area of the western Salvadoran province of Sonsonate, police said.

Three of the victims shared the same surname, but it is not known whether they were related to one another.

The men were on their way to work at a nearby farm when they were intercepted and fatally shot by unknown assailants, police deputy inspector Omar Escobar told reporters.

The killings took place in El Cacao, a hamlet outside the town of Nahuilingo.

El Salvador, whose 1980-1992 civil war claimed around 80,000 lives, witnesses an average of 11 homicides a day, the government says, attributing much of the violence to youth gangs involved in drug dealing and extortion. EFE