A 15-year-old boy shot in the head during a bloody shootout between drug gangs in western France on Saturday died of his wounds, the regional prosecutor said, while the interior minister warned the country was at risk of a ‘Mexicanization’ as a result of rising drug crime.
The teenager had been in intensive care since the shootings on Thursday evening in the city of Poitiers, which have raised alarm across the country about rising violence in gang wars making the streets unsafe.
Four other minors, aged between 15 and 16, were also injured by gunshots fired outside a restaurant in the city in the incident that involved dozens of people.
Officers used tear gas to break up the fight and restored order about 45 minutes after arriving on the scene, the source added.
Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said Friday that France’s fight against drug-related violence is at a “tipping point,” with the nation facing a choice between “full mobilization or the ‘Mexicanization’ of the country.
Mexico has suffered more than 450,000 drug-related killings since the government began using the military to combat its notorious drug cartels in 2006.
Gangland violence long associated with the Mediterranean port city of Marseille has spread to other French cities in recent years.
Victims can include gang members, some of whom are minors who guard trading places or work as hitmen, as well as innocent bystanders.
Poitiers’ experience on Thursday was “unprecedented” for the city of 90,000 inhabitants, Mayor Leonore Moncond’huy said, adding that it “demonstrated quite serious developments in society”.
Retailleau, a member of the right-wing Republicans and seen as a hardliner on security issues, has called for the fight against drug violence to become a “nationwide effort” since becoming interior minister in Prime Minister Michel Barnier’s shaky minority government.
“The ‘narco-criminals’ no longer know borders… These shootings are not happening in South America, they are happening in Rennes, in Poitiers… we are at a tipping point,” Retailleau told BFMTV. (AFP)