A 15-year-old boy has been left in critical condition after being shot in the head during a drive-by attack allegedly linked to drug trafficking in western France, local officials and media have reported, with hundreds of people caught in a subsequent late night brawl.
The teenager was reportedly among five people injured in the attack in the city of Poitiers, two more of whom were also teenagers, French media claimed.
Interior minister Bruno Retailleau told BFMTV/RMC radio on Friday that the shooting began at 10.45pm local time on Thursday in front of a restaurant before rapidly escalating into a mass fight.
“What started as a shooting at a restaurant ended up in a fight between rival gangs that involved several hundred people,” Mr Retailleau said.
BFMTV said that people in a car reportedly opened fire on a bar-restaurant on the Place Coimbra, a known drug-trafficking hotspot, before driving off.
When police found the victims near the bar, which was reportedly riddled with up to a dozen bullet-holes, they were attacked by youths during a battle between rival gangs involving hundreds of people, BFMTV added.
Mr Retailleau described the episode of violence as the “tipping point” in France. The incident comes less than a week after a five-year-old was left in a critical condition after being shot last Saturday in Rennes, northwest France.
The child was hit by gunfire while in a car with his father in the city’s Maurepas neighbourhood, an area identified by intelligence services as one of the city’s major drug dealing areas.
“Trafficking gangs today have no limits,” Mr Retailleau said. “These shootouts are not in Latin America, they are in Rennes, in Poitiers, in once-tranquil western France.”
Referencing drug cartel violence in Mexico, the minister added: “We have a choice between general mobilisation or the Mexicanisation of the country.”
Reports about the ensuing brawl in Poitiers are conflicting, but police sources told France Info that up to 600 people may have been involved, though not at the same time.
They said the fight happened in several stages that rarely involved more than 100 individuals taking part at any one time.
The mayor of Poitiers, Leonore Moncond’huy, described the incident as a “new episode of unacceptable violence”.
“The youth of those involved is particularly worrying,” she added in a statement on X, formerly Twitter.
“I call for everyone’s responsibility to maintain calm in the city, and welcome the increased presence of security forces.”
The office of the Vienne district, of which Poitiers is the capital, wrote that police reinforcements have been deployed in the city.