Shootings left at least three dead and eight injured in different districts of Marseille, overnight from Sunday to Monday. Since the beginning of 2023, in Marseille, thirteen people, sometimes minors, have been shot and killed against the backdrop of drug trafficking.
Three shootings, three dead, and eight wounded. This is the umpteenth episode of a turf war between drug traffickers in Marseille after the bloody shootings that took place on the night of Sunday April 2 to Monday April 3. This war is intensifying and evolving, according to the public prosecutor who held a press conference late Monday afternoon and indicated that four people are in custody.
>> TESTIMONIALS. Shootings in Marseille: in the Joliette district, “shocked” residents want to see the violence “stop”
First of all, the prosecutor of Marseille points to the profile of more and more victims. The three young people targeted in the city center in the Joliette district were teenagers aged 14, 15 and 16. The two older ones had already had dealings with the police for petty trafficking, as one of their friends admits: “He happened to find his money, like all young people, like everyone else. They saw him in a neighborhood elsewhere, and they came to shoot him, that’s all.”
“I don’t want my children to live in this atmosphere”
In the city of Castellas, the young people targeted were around 20 years old. All were on file, some for a long time, explain parents who came to demonstrate and cry out their helplessness in the face of this phenomenon: “There are little ones, they tried to take them at 10-11 years old, to give them 10 euros and tell them go get me hereindignantly a mother. And little by little, we attract them. Young people aged 10, 11 or 13, girls, boys. It’s really gangrene, we wonder what we can do to save the rest of our children.” “I have two children aged 12 and 14says another resident of the neighborhood. I don’t want them to live in this atmosphere. I am scared.”
“I work far from the neighborhood and I’m away all day. I have my children who go to college and who come back alone, I’m afraid for them.”
A resident of the Castellas districtat franceinfo
And while this city of Castellas has just been redone, with pleasant public spaces, gardens or playgrounds, this mother has only one idea in mind: to move.
A logic of “vendetta”
The public prosecutor pointed out the increasingly common involvement of illegal aliens in the drug trade, as it becomes increasingly difficult to recruit on the deal points. Dominique Laurens also denounces a logic of “vendetta” when the results of this beginning of the year 2023 are particularly bloody in the department: 14 dead, 43 injured in just over three months. There were 32 dead and 33 injured in the whole of 2022
To strengthen security in neighborhoods plagued by drug trafficking in Marseille, CRS 8, a company specializing in urban violence, was deployed Monday evening. The Minister of the Interior has also announced the arrival by September of 11 judicial police officers to reinforce the research and intervention brigade.