A shooting and massive brawl linked to drug trafficking has seriously wounded five people, including three teenagers, in western France, officials and media said, in the latest such gunfight to injure children.
The shooting began at about 10.45pm on Thursday in front of a restaurant in Poitiers and rapidly escalated into a mass fight, the interior minister, Bruno Retailleau, told BFMTV/RMC radio on Friday.
“What started as a shooting at a restaurant ended up in a fight between rival gangs that involved several hundred people,” Retailleau said. A 15-year-old boy who was shot in the head was in a critical condition, he said.
Citing police sources, BFMTV said two other teenagers, both 16, were among the injured. People in a car had opened fire on a bar-restaurant on the Place Coimbra, a known drug-trafficking hotspot, before driving off, it reported.
Police found the five victims near the bar, which was riddled with up to a dozen bullets. The officers were then attacked by youths amid a battle between rival gangs that at its height involved hundreds of people, BFMTV said.
Retailleau said France was at a “tipping point” when it came to drug-related violence. He said he was planning to travel later in the day to Rennes, in Brittany, where a five-year-old was critically ill after being shot last Saturday.
“Trafficking gangs today have no limits,” he said. “These shootouts are not in Latin America, they are in Rennes, in Poitiers, in once-tranquil western France. We have a choice between general mobilisation or the Mexicanisation of the country.”
The child in Rennes was hit by gunfire while in a car with his father in the city’s Maurepas neighbourhood, identified by intelligence services as one of the city’s major drug dealing areas.
Police sources told France Info that while the fight on Thursday may have involved as many as 400 or 600 people during the course of the evening, it happened in phases and there were rarely more than 100 individuals taking part at any one time.
The mayor of Poitiers, Léonore Moncond’huy, said the gunfight was “another unacceptable episode of violence”, lamenting “in particular the young age of the victims and the participants” and praising the work of the police.
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The local MP, Sacha Houlié, said the violence was “symptomatic of the gangrene that sets in as drug-trafficking grows” and promised police reinforcements would arrive on Friday to “ensure a return to calm and guarantee public order”.
Drug-related violence in France has largely been associated with Marseille, which has had 17 drug-related killings so far this year, and where a 14-year-old boy was allegedly hired last month to carry out a revenge murder.
In August, a 10-year-old boy in a car with his uncle was shot dead in suspected drugs-related violence in the southern town of Nimes. Police believe the killing was a case of mistaken identity as the car resembled one used in an earlier drive-by shooting.
