Panic in France as kids fall sufferer to deadly violence of Marseille drug gangs

[ad_1] Andrew Harding Paris correspondent, Marseille

<img sizes="(min-width: 1280px) 50vw, (min-width: 1008px) 66vw, 96vw" srcset="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/240/cpsprodpb/00b7/live/2990faf0-d443-11f0-8642-e5058b210012.jpg.webp 240w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/320/cpsprodpb/00b7/live/2990faf0-d443-11f0-8642-e5058b210012.jpg.webp 320w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/00b7/live/2990faf0-d443-11f0-8642-e5058b210012.jpg.webp 480w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/640/cpsprodpb/00b7/live/2990faf0-d443-11f0-8642-e5058b210012.jpg.webp 640w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpsprodpb/00b7/live/2990faf0-d443-11f0-8642-e5058b210012.jpg.webp 800w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1024/cpsprodpb/00b7/live/2990faf0-d443-11f0-8642-e5058b210012.jpg.webp 1024w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1536/cpsprodpb/00b7/live/2990faf0-d443-11f0-8642-e5058b210012.jpg.webp 1536w" src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/00b7/live/2990faf0-d443-11f0-8642-e5058b210012.jpg.webp" loading="eager" alt="AFP via Getty Images This photograph shows graffiti indicating drug prices on the walls of The Bel Horizon tower, located in the 3rd arrondissement of Marseille, on December 3, 2025" class="sc-5340b511-0 hLdNfA"/> AFP through Getty Pictures Drug crime has skyrocketed in Marseille, France's second largest metropolis

Warning: This text accommodates disturbing particulars from the beginning.

A bunch of youngsters noticed Adel's physique on their strategy to faculty, simply as his mother and father have been heading to the police station to report him lacking. A grotesque, charred silhouette, reclining, with one knee raised, as if lounging on considered one of Marseille's close by seashores.

He was 15 when he died, within the ordinary manner: a bullet within the head, then petrol poured over his slim corpse and set on hearth.

Somebody even filmed the scene on the seaside, the most recent in a grim collection of shoot-then-burn murders linked to this port metropolis's fast-evolving drug wars, more and more fuelled by social media and now marked by chillingly random acts of violence and by the rising function of youngsters, typically coerced into the commerce.

"It is chaos now," mentioned a scrawny gang-member, lifting his shirt in a close-by park to indicate us a torso marked by the scars of not less than 4 bullets - the results of an tried assassination by a rival gang.

France's Ministry of Justice estimates that the variety of youngsters concerned within the medicine commerce has risen greater than four-fold up to now eight years.

"I have been in [a gang] since I used to be 15. However every thing has modified now. The codes, the foundations – there aren't any extra guidelines. No one respects something nowadays. The bosses begin... to make use of kids. They pay them peanuts. They usually find yourself killing others for no actual motive. It is anarchy, throughout city," mentioned the person, now in his early 20s, who requested us to make use of his nickname, The Immortal.

<img sizes="(min-width: 1280px) 50vw, (min-width: 1008px) 66vw, 96vw" srcset="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/240/cpsprodpb/d6c2/live/a0e1a2f0-d441-11f0-8642-e5058b210012.jpg.webp 240w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/320/cpsprodpb/d6c2/live/a0e1a2f0-d441-11f0-8642-e5058b210012.jpg.webp 320w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/d6c2/live/a0e1a2f0-d441-11f0-8642-e5058b210012.jpg.webp 480w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/640/cpsprodpb/d6c2/live/a0e1a2f0-d441-11f0-8642-e5058b210012.jpg.webp 640w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpsprodpb/d6c2/live/a0e1a2f0-d441-11f0-8642-e5058b210012.jpg.webp 800w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1024/cpsprodpb/d6c2/live/a0e1a2f0-d441-11f0-8642-e5058b210012.jpg.webp 1024w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1536/cpsprodpb/d6c2/live/a0e1a2f0-d441-11f0-8642-e5058b210012.jpg.webp 1536w" src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/d6c2/live/a0e1a2f0-d441-11f0-8642-e5058b210012.jpg.webp" loading="lazy" alt="The Immortal lifts his shirt to show bullet wounds on his torso" class="sc-5340b511-0 hLdNfA"/> The Immortal, a Marseille gang member, displaying his bullet wounds from a rival gang assault

Throughout Marseille, police, attorneys, politicians and neighborhood organisers speak of a psychose – a state of collective trauma or panic – gripping components of the town, as they debate whether or not to battle again with ever more durable police motion or with contemporary makes an attempt to handle entrenched poverty.

"It is an environment of worry. It is apparent that the drug traffickers are dominant, and gaining extra floor on daily basis," mentioned a neighborhood lawyer, who requested to stay nameless for worry of reprisals towards her or her household.

"The rule of regulation is now subordinate to the gangs. Till now we have a robust state once more, now we have to take precautions," she mentioned, explaining her current determination to cease representing victims of gang violence.

"There's a lot competitors within the medicine commerce that... persons are able to do something. So, now we have children aged 13 or 14 who are available in as lookouts or sellers. The younger see useless our bodies, they hear about it, on daily basis. They usually're now not afraid of killing, or being killed," neighborhood organiser Mohamed Benmeddour instructed us.

The set off for Marseille's present psychose was the homicide, final month, of Mehdi Kessaci, a 20-year-old trainee policeman with no hyperlinks to the drug commerce. It's extensively believed his dying was meant as a warning to his brother, a outstanding 22-year-old anti-gang activist and aspiring politician named Ahmed Kessaci.

Below shut police safety now, Kessaci spoke to the BBC about Mehdi's dying, and the guilt he feels.

"Ought to I've made my household depart [Marseille]? The battle of my life goes to be this battle towards guilt," he mentioned.

<img sizes="(min-width: 1280px) 50vw, (min-width: 1008px) 66vw, 96vw" srcset="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/240/cpsprodpb/01b3/live/0b5f2440-d442-11f0-8642-e5058b210012.jpg.webp 240w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/320/cpsprodpb/01b3/live/0b5f2440-d442-11f0-8642-e5058b210012.jpg.webp 320w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/01b3/live/0b5f2440-d442-11f0-8642-e5058b210012.jpg.webp 480w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/640/cpsprodpb/01b3/live/0b5f2440-d442-11f0-8642-e5058b210012.jpg.webp 640w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpsprodpb/01b3/live/0b5f2440-d442-11f0-8642-e5058b210012.jpg.webp 800w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1024/cpsprodpb/01b3/live/0b5f2440-d442-11f0-8642-e5058b210012.jpg.webp 1024w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1536/cpsprodpb/01b3/live/0b5f2440-d442-11f0-8642-e5058b210012.jpg.webp 1536w" src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/01b3/live/0b5f2440-d442-11f0-8642-e5058b210012.jpg.webp" loading="lazy" alt="AFP via Getty Images French anti-drug activist Amine Kessaci (C) and his mother Ouassila Benhamdi Kessaci (L) gather to take part in a march in tribute to Mehdi Kessaci at the roundabout where he was murdered and to protest against drug trafficking, in Marseille, southern France on November 22, 2025. " class="sc-5340b511-0 hLdNfA"/> AFP through Getty Pictures French anti-drug activist Amine Kessaci (centre) is mourning his brother Mehdi, who was murdered in Marseille

Ahmed Kessaci first rose to nationwide prominence in 2020, after his older brother, a gang member named Brahim, was additionally murdered.

"We have had this psychose for years. We have identified that our lives are hanging by a single thread. However every thing modified since Covid. The perpetrators are getting youthful and youthful. The victims are youthful and youthful," he mentioned.

"My little brother was an harmless sufferer. There was a time when the actual thugs... had an ethical code. You do not kill in daytime. Not in entrance of everybody. You do not burn our bodies. First you threaten with a shot to the leg... Immediately these steps have all disappeared."

Citing at present's "unprecedented" ranges of violence, French police are responding with what they name safety "bombardments" in high-crime areas of Marseille.

Though one gang, the DZ Mafia, now seems to dominate the commerce, it operates a sort of franchise system, with a fractious community of small distributors typically staffed by youngsters and undocumented immigrants, who conflict violently over territory.

Based on one estimate, as much as 20,000 individuals could also be concerned within the metropolis's drug trade. Final 12 months officers confiscated €42m (£36m) in legal property from the gangs.

Video footage shared on social media routinely reveals gang members, armed with computerized rifles, capturing at one another in Marseille's numerous cités – poor neighbourhoods characterised by high-rise buildings and a focus of social housing.

On a chilly afternoon final week, we accompanied a bunch of armed riot police on considered one of their common "bombardment" missions.

The officers sped as much as a dilapidated block of flats of their vans as a youthful gang look-out on the gate promptly fled on foot. Splitting into two teams, the police ran up both facet of the constructing in search of to catch sellers within the stairwells.

"The purpose is to disrupt the drug dealing spots. We have closed greater than 40 of them... and we have locked up lots of people," defined Sébastien Lautard, a regional police chief.

Watch: BBC movies arrests in Marseille drug raid

"Flip him spherical," mentioned an officer, brusquely, as his workforce pinned an 18-year-old up towards a door.

In a grimy cellar close by, the police discovered dozens of vials and tiny plastic luggage used to distribute cocaine. Later, a policeman defined that the younger man they'd detained was pleading to be arrested, saying he had come to Marseille from one other metropolis, and was now being held towards his will and compelled to work for a drug gang.

The officers took him away in a van.

"This isn't El Dorado. We now have a number of kids recruited on social media. They arrive to Marseille considering they will make straightforward cash. They're promised €200 ($233;£175) a day. However it typically ends in distress, violence and generally dying," mentioned the town's chief prosecutor, Nicolas Bessone.

In his workplace near the town's previous harbour, Bessone described an trade considered price as much as €7bn nationwide and characterised by two new developments: a rising emphasis on on-line recruitment, gross sales, and supply; and a rising variety of youngsters coerced into the commerce.

"We now see how the traffickers enslave these... little troopers. They create fictional money owed to make them work without spending a dime. They torture them in the event that they steal €20 to purchase a sandwich. It is ultra-violence. The typical age of the perpetrators and victims is getting youthful and youthful," mentioned Bessone.

He urged native individuals to not succumb to a psychose however as a substitute to "react, to stand up".

The lawyer who requested us to cover her identification described a case she had dealt with.

"One younger individual, who completely did not need to be a part of a community, was picked up after faculty, compelled to take part within the medicine commerce, was raped, then threatened, then his household additionally threatened. All means are used to create a workforce," she mentioned.

On Tiktok, dozens of movies, set to music, promote medicine on the market in Marseille's cités, "from 10:00 to midnight", every product with its personal emoji, for cocaine, cannabis and marijuana. Different adverts search to recruit new gang members with messages like "recruiting a employee", "€250 for lookouts", "€500 to hold medicine".

For some native politicians, the reply to Marseille's troubles is a state of emergency, and much more durable guidelines on immigration.

"Authority have to be restored. We have to finish a tradition of permissiveness in our nation. We have to give extra freedom, extra energy to the police and the judiciary," mentioned Franck Alissio, a neighborhood MP for the populist, far-right Nationwide Rally occasion, and a potential mayoral candidate.

Though the traditional Mediterranean metropolis of Marseille has, for hundreds of years, been identified for its giant immigrant neighborhood, Alissio argued that "at present, the issue is that we're now not capable of combine economically and assimilate. An excessive amount of immigration. It is the quantity [of immigrants] that is the issue. And actually, the drug traffickers, sellers, lookouts, the leaders of those mafia, are virtually all immigrants or foreigners with twin nationality."

It's a controversial declare that's arduous to confirm in a rustic that strives to keep away from together with such particulars in official figures.

Alissio claimed that billions of euros had been poured into Marseille's poorest neighborhoods by successive governments to no impact. He blamed mother and father and colleges for permitting kids into the medicine commerce however added that he was targeted on "fixing the issue, not doing sociology".

Far-right events have lengthy loved sturdy help throughout the south of France, however much less so within the numerous metropolis of Marseille itself. Critics of the RN, just like the lawyer whose identification now we have hid, accused the occasion of "exploiting distress and worry," and wrongly blaming immigrants for a "gangrene" that's widespread throughout all communities in France.

Philippe Pujol, a neighborhood author and skilled on the drug commerce in Marseille, was additionally supplied police safety after the homicide of Mehdi Kessaci final month.

"I am unsure if there is a good motive for this terror. However... terror is taking maintain. I'd slightly be afraid and cautious than take pointless dangers," he mentioned.

However he hit again towards requires more durable police motion, arguing it was merely nursing the signs "of a struggling society", slightly than treating the causes of the issue.

Describing entrenched poverty as a "monster," Pujol painted an image of a society radicalised by many years of neglect.

"The monster is a combination of patronage, corruption, and political and financial selections made towards the general public curiosity," Pujol mentioned.

"These children will be jerks once they're in a bunch, however whenever you're alone with them, they're nonetheless kids, with goals, who don't desire this violence."