How to Use death squad in a Sentence

death squad

noun
  • The death squad that carried out the massacre was ready for anything that might crop up.
    — Hazlitt, 26 Nov. 2024
  • Later, these tractors would be used to tear down the fence and open the way for Hamas’s death squads.
    — Assaf Orion, Foreign Affairs, 3 Nov. 2023
  • Mr Uribe appointed officials with links to right-wing death squads.
    — The Economist, 27 June 2018
  • Why did Marian think that these randos could go up against a Danish death squad?
    — Roxana Hadadi, Vulture, 7 June 2021
  • In the chaos that ensued, the police dispatched death squads to pursue prisoners who had escaped from the city’s jail.
    — Jon Lee Anderson, The New Yorker, 17 July 2023
  • The rest had been killed in Nazi concentration camps or by roving SS death squads.
    — Washington Post, 8 Oct. 2019
  • Another, a ranch hand, described a death squad boss roaming the property freely on horseback.
    — New York Times, 8 July 2018
  • In short, the military eliminated the group and adopted its death squad methods.
    — Kristina Mani, The Conversation, 23 Sep. 2025
  • Duterte has said testimony linking him to the death squads was fabricated.
    — Bloomberg.com, 15 Mar. 2017
  • Those documents were later used to seal the fates of the Nazi death squad commanders during the trial.
    — Minyvonne Burke, NBC News, 8 Apr. 2023
  • South Africa, conspiracy theorists point out, was the party with the death squad contacts handy.
    — Josephine Livingstone, The New Republic, 10 June 2020
  • The All-Stars trained and played under the hostile eyes of armed thugs managed by the head of Trujillo’s death squads.
    — Paul Dickson, WSJ, 11 Apr. 2018
  • That the United States had been running death squads under the cover of a police program called Phoenix.
    — Jeff Stein, Newsweek, 31 Jan. 2018
  • His death squad was accused of gunning down dozens of migrants trying to sail to Europe, according to a survivor of the massacre.
    — New York Times, 25 June 2019
  • Within a month, a Chilean Army death squad was engaged in a countrywide tour of assassinations.
    — Literary Hub, 8 Oct. 2025
  • That didn't happen, but what had taken its place were Shia death squads seeking revenge for Sunni insurgent attacks.
    — Nick Paton Walsh, CNN, 27 Oct. 2019
  • Zimbabwe has been ruled by Robert Mugabe since 1980 with infamous death squads.
    — Toby Zinman, Philly.com, 8 Oct. 2017
  • Many who fear being nabbed by death squads have also fled to El Salvador, Honduras and Florida.
    — Maria Verza, The Seattle Times, 25 Oct. 2018
  • Smoke rises from cities; the highways are filled with walls of wrecked cars; suicide bombers dive into a crowd lined up for water rations; death squads, snipers, and mass graves dot the countryside.
    — Alison Willmore, Vulture, 4 June 2024
  • The mid-1970s in Argentina saw the start of the Dirty War, in which right-wing death squads killed tens of thousands.
    — Washington Post, 20 Sep. 2019
  • At least 60 people were also killed by death squads set up by members of Spain’s security forces and clandestine far-right groups.
    — Washington Post, 5 May 2018
  • Smoke rises from the cities; the highways are filled with walls of wrecked cars; suicide bombers dive into crowds lined up for water rations; death squads, snipers, and mass graves dot the countryside.
    — Bilge Ebiri, Vulture, 24 May 2024
  • Who wants to be seen as the apologist for South American drug cartels by saying that the Fourth Fleet can’t be turned into a death squad?
    — Chris Stirewalt, The Hill, 10 Oct. 2025
  • In El Salvador, Henry had learned to distrust the police, who often worked for rival gangs or paramilitary death squads.
    — Hannah Dreier, Daily Intelligencer, 2 Apr. 2018
  • Maduro has responded to public protests by jailing and killing dissenters; death squads aligned with the government have assassinated at least seven thousand people in the past year and a half.
    — Jonathan Blitzer, The New Yorker, 16 Sep. 2019
  • Untold decades of backing despots and death squads in Latin America produced the multitudes of desperate migrants who have come to our borders, pleading for help.
    — Kevin Baker, Harper's Magazine, 27 Apr. 2020
  • That said, the visiting stars had a bit too good a time, diminishing their on-field performance and resulting in the head of the government's death squad being attached to their team's management.
    — Mark Z. Barabak, latimes.com, 26 Mar. 2018
  • Franco’s forces and his fascist allies to an Andalusian marquess who sets out to hunt communists with his personal death squad to a militia woman who saves the life of a right-wing lawyer out of compassion.
    — Liza Foreman, Variety, 6 Nov. 2022
  • Members of the Legion’s direct-action units, appropriately termed echipa mortii (death squads), in turn, each contributed some of their blood to a common glass, from which all drank, uniting them in life and death.
    — Stanley G. Payne, Slate Magazine, 21 Feb. 2017
  • His career almost derailed in the late 1990s, when two members of Congress accused him of lying under oath while testifying about Haitian death squads.
    — Clay Risen, New York Times, 8 July 2023

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'death squad.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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