Rampant drug-fuelled violence in France is turning the country into what has been dubbed a 'Mexicanized narco-state' by a leading politician. Narco wars are being fought across the country and have seen teenagers and children shot, stabbed and burned alive, gang kingpins broken out of custody, and cocaine washed up on beaches.
France's new conservative interior minister recently declared war on the operating gangs after a year-old boy was caught in the crossfires and killed in a massive brawl and gunfight in Poitiers, on November 1. The violence erupted in front of a restaurant and turned into a shootout involving up to people, France's Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said. He spoke during a visit to Rennes, Brittany, where a five-year-old boy was left with critical injuries after being hit in the head by a stray bullet during a drug-related collision at the end of last month.
But not even 24 hours after Retailleau left the city, a year-old died after being fatally stabbed in the Maurepas neighbourhood, which police said is rife with drug crime. France's Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau said: 'Narco scum today have no limits' after a boy, 15, was killed in a gunfight in Poitiers on November 1.
Armed police during Retailleau's visit to Rennes amid concern over drug-related violence. A drugs menu pictured sprayed onto a wall in Nimes - where a year-old boy was killed in suspected drugs violence in Michel Barnier's new government is now under increasing pressure to act as France descends further into a hellhole of mass killing and drug crime. Across the country, at least 16 hotspots of violence have been uncovered in recent years, from Nimes - where a year-old boy was killed in suspected drugs violence in - to Paris, as shocking statistics of death and destruction emerge on an almost daily basis.
Once mainly associated with Marseille, gun battles between drug gangs have become more frequent in Grenoble, and have even begun spreading out into cities including Poitiers, Clermont-Ferrand, Valence, and Villeurbanne. In Valence, a year-old man was shot dead and two others wounded as they queued outside a nightclub for a Halloween party on Thursday night; the following day an year-old was gunned down and killed in a suburb of the same town. In Villeurbanne, a suburb of Lyon, a man was shot dead, and in Clermont-Ferrand a teenager is in a critical condition after receiving a bullet in the head.
