SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AFP) — More than 2,000 soldiers and police surrounded two districts in El Salvador's capital on Saturday as part of President Nayib Bukele's war on gangs, the second such operation this month in the Central American country.

"As of this morning, the Tutunichapa district in San Salvador is totally surrounded," Bukele posted on Twitter.

"More than 1,000 soldiers and 130 police officers will extract the criminals who still remain," he added.

Bukele later tweeted that 1,000 more soldiers and 100 police officers had been dispatched to La Granjita, another neighborhood in the capital.

"After encircling Tutunichapa, a famous drug distribution center, we knew that many drug traffickers would take refuge in the neighborhood of La Granjita, another famous distribution center," Bukele tweeted.

Images released Saturday by the office of the president showed heavily armed soldiers entering Tutunichapa, a populous district where small houses mostly constructed of concrete blocks stand alongside one of the many polluted streams that run through San Salvador.

Justice Minister Gustavo Villatoro posted photos of members of an anti-narcotics police unit with drug-sniffing dogs.

"We are going to extract every criminal from our communities," Villatoro said in a Twitter post.

Almost 60,000 suspected gang members have been arrested since the launch of the state of emergency in March, which has prompted humanitarian groups to question what they see as heavy-handed tactics.

As of Saturday, some 650 suspected gang members had been arrested in Soyapango, Defense Minister Rene Merino said.

Over 75 percent of Salvadorans approve of the emergency declaration, and nine out of 10 Salvadorans say that crime "has decreased" with Bukele's policies, according to a Central American University poll published in October.