Former guerrilla commander Salvador Sanchez Ceren was sworn in Sunday as president of El Salvador with the pressing tasks of dealing with violent gangs, a struggling economy and endemic poverty.

Sanchez Ceren, 69, promised to govern "with honesty, austerity, efficiency and transparency."

Six people were shot dead and four wounded in a suspected gang attack on a bus near El Salvador's international airport on Friday, police said.

The targeted attack happened around noon on a stretch of road linking Oscar Arnulfo Romero airport with the capital San Salvador.

A 6.2-magnitude earthquake that struck Nicaragua killed one person, left 33 injured and damaged more than 800 homes, the government said Friday.

President Daniel Ortega declared a state of emergency after Thursday's quake, centered in the Pacific coast region of the Central American nation.

El Salvador's election officials on Sunday declared ex-leftist guerrilla commander Salvador Sanchez Ceren the winner of a March 9 presidential election, after rejecting the opposition's last challenges to the results.

Eugenio Chicas, the president of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal confirmed a razor-thin election win by Sanchez Ceren over Norman Quijano of the conservative ARENA party who had challenged the results.

Former leftist rebel commander Salvador Sanchez Ceren has won last Sunday's presidential election in El Salvador by a razor-thin margin, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal said.

He inherits leadership of a country beset with widespread poverty and violence from powerful street gangs.

The parties of both candidates in El Salvador's surprisingly tight presidential runoff clash claimed victory late Sunday.

Pre-election polls had showed ex-guerrilla commander Salvador Sanchez Ceren of the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) comfortably ahead of Norman Quijano with the conservative ARENA party.

A strong 6.5 magnitude earthquake struck parts of southern Guatemala and El Salvador on Friday, U.S. seismologists said, with only minor damage and no casualties immediately reported.

Guatemalan broadcast stations in the western part of the country lost power, according to reports. Landslides clogged up roads and there was slight damage to some homes.

A seriously ill woman denied a medical abortion has had a successful cesarean section to deliver a baby that doctors have given little chance of surviving, El Salvador's Health Ministry announced late Monday.

The 22-year-old woman, known only as Beatriz for privacy reasons, underwent the operation in the afternoon after 27 weeks of pregnancy, the ministry said. Her baby girl was born without a brain.

El Salvador's Roman Catholic archbishop assassinated in 1980 for speaking out against brutal government repression got a special honor Sunday, with the dedication of a key new avenue in his name.

Monsenor Oscar Arnulfo Romero Street, a new boulevard in the west of the capital, San Salvador, connects the city with neighboring city Santa Tecla.

A 7.4-magnitude earthquake rocked southwestern Guatemala on Wednesday, killing 48 people and injuring another 150 while more were missing as homes crumbled.

The earthquake also rattled nerves in neighboring Mexico and El Salvador, sparking a tsunami alert on the Salvadoran coast and evacuations from offices, homes and schools as far north as Mexico City.