This Sunday morning, around 5:30 a.m., three young men were shot to death, east of Marseille. 20 minutes takes stock of this new shooting, which brings the toll of violence against a background of drug trafficking to 21 dead since the beginning of the year.
What happened this Sunday in Marseille?
Shortly after 5 a.m., individuals driving in a car opened fire with Kalashnikovs on another vehicle in which there were five men, in a rather residential area of the 11th arrondissement, in the east of the city, said a police source.
The victims had left a nightclub shortly before and drove for several hundred meters when their car was targeted, at the corner of boulevard de la Pomme and avenue Bernard Lecache. Three of the people targeted, aged in their twenties, were fatally injured, the fire doctor noting their deaths on the spot. The other two were not injured and one of them managed to escape.
Where is the investigation?
The neighborhood where this shooting took place is not known to harbor any drug trafficking outlets. According to information from Provencethe men targeted were known to the police and were from Félix Pyat, in the 3rd arrondissement, largely affected by trafficking.
As for the attackers, they fled in their vehicle. A car on fire was found burned shortly after the incident, in Aubagne, near the place of the attack. A usual modus operandi in settling scores related to “narcotics”, even if it was not immediately confirmed that it was the one used by the attackers. “All the police services are mobilized to find the perpetrators of these despicable crimes and to dismantle the networks of traffickers responsible for this violence”, declared the police chief of Bouches-du-Rhône, Frédérique Camilleri, who went to on the spot.
“This fight continues with determination”, she insisted, stressing that “over the past weekend alone, five people were arrested in possession of weapons in connection with drug trafficking and three Kalashnikovs , a machine gun and a handgun were seized”. The judicial police have been seized of the investigation.
What assessment of the violence in Marseille?
Since January 1, 2023, 21 people have died amid drug trafficking. The victims are generally young men, sometimes teenagers, located at the bottom of the trafficking ladder, lookouts or sellers at deal points, targeted by killers from rival gangs. The deployment of reinforcements such as the CRS 8, a unit specializing in maintaining order, in particular to participate in the strategy of “shelling” deal points, did not prevent new deaths.
In early May, the various left-wing mayor of Marseille Benoît Payan deplored “a war that has lasted too long”, asking for a “firm and strong” state in the face of “killers” who “no longer hide”.