France has reached a “tipping point” on drug-related violence, the country’s hardline interior minister warned on Friday, after hundreds of people took part in a massive shootout.
The gunfight, which left a teenager fighting for his life and four others seriously wounded, erupted overnight in the western city of Poitiers.
Police intervened at around 10.45pm after shots were fired outside a restaurant in the Couronneries district of the city and found the first casualty on the ground.
Treated for a bullet wound to the head, the 15-year-old was hospitalised in a state of absolute emergency, with a life-threatening prognosis, said a police source. A local witness said the teenager was a customer caught in the crossfire.
According to the same source, two other teenagers were shot, one in the shoulder and the other in the ankle, and were treated by the emergency services. Around ten 22-calibre shells were found on the ground by the investigators.
Bruno Retailleau, the French interior minister said: “What started as a shooting at a restaurant ended up in a fight between rival gangs that involved several hundred people. I’m told by the local (state) prefect that four to six hundred people were involved.”
Other police sources, cited by French media, claimed the number involved was far lower, at 50 to 60 people.
‘General mobilisation or Mexicanisation of France’
Mr Retailleau was due to travel later on Friday to the northwestern city of Rennes, where a five-year-old child was also between life and death after being shot in the head in another shootout on Saturday related to drug trafficking.
He said: “These shootings are not happening in South America, they’re happening in Rennes and Poitiers.
“We are at a tipping point and the choice is between a general mobilisation or the Mexicanisation of the country.”
The violence follows a recent hard-hitting French senatorial report, which warned that the country was “submerged” by drug dealing and that President Emmanuel Macron’s response was “meagre” and “not up to the task”.
It states: “Contrary to the cliché that drug trafficking is the preserve of ‘no-go zones’ stretching from the northern suburbs of Marseille to ‘crack hill’ in Paris, and perhaps a few festivals, drug dealing has spread to medium-sized and even small towns and rural areas.”
Bigger slice of drugs business
With cocaine flooding France from South America, consumption on the rise and historic bastions like Marseille saturated, organised crime is fanning out to the provinces in search of a bigger slice of an annual drugs business of between €3 billion (£2.5 bn) to €6 billion (£5 bn).
Ofast, the French anti-drugs agency, warned: “From Verdun to Valence, a number of sensitive neighbourhoods in medium-sized towns have been the scene of armed clashes.”
They’ve also added that “smaller urban areas” are no longer spared “kidnappings, violence and even murder”.
Drug-trafficking a ‘national cause’
Mr Retailleau has called for the fight against drug trafficking to become “a national cause” similar to that against terrorism.
He wants the government to take up some of the senatorial report proposals such as the creation of a status for repentant drug traffickers and a dedicated national drugs prosecutor’s office.
“We are going to set up a ‘task force’ to break up the ecosystem’ of drug trafficking,” he said on Friday, stressing the importance of a “global strategy” to try to curb the phenomenon.
Increasing youth violence
There is rising public concern over the issue of youth violence, often drug-related.
In Marseille, where a record 49 murders were committed last year, prosecutors warn that teenagers are increasingly involved in drug battles involving assault rifles and handguns, and even hit “low-cost” jobs.
Two rival gangs – DZ Mafia and Yoda – are together blamed for most of the killings that have rocked the French port city of 860,000 people.
Last month, a 15-year-old boy, apparently on his way to carry out a hit on behalf of DZ, was cornered by rivals, stabbed at least 50 times and then set on fire while he was still alive.
Two days later, another 14-year-old hired to avenge his killing, instead shot dead Nessim Ramdane, a part-time driver for the taxi app Bolt.
Mr Retailleau is due to travel to Marseille next Friday with Didier Migaud, the justice minister, to announce new measures.