Date 9 February 2015 Deaths 0 Perpetrators Drug Gang | Target Drug Gang, police Non-fatal injuries 1 | |
 | ||
Location La Castellane, Marseille | ||
On February 9, 2015, hooded gunmen in the French city of Marseille sparked a lockdown after they fired Kalashnikovs at police officers while Manuel Valls, the French prime minister, was visiting the city. It is thought that the shooting was drug-gang related, but due to the recent Charlie Hebdo shooting and the Porte de Vincennes hostage crisis during the 2015 Île-de-France attacks, the entire troubled Marseille suburb of La Castellane was on lockdown for hours. No one was injured.
Contents
Incident
Shortly after gunfire occurred near a police car, the National Gendarmerie Intervention Group locked down the area. A number of arrests were made, resulting in the seizure of seven Kalashnikov rifles, two .357 Magnum revolvers and around 20 kilograms of drugs. However, it soon became clear that the gunmen were not aiming at the police; instead, the gunfire was the result of a turf war between two gangs, selling primarily cannabis and cocaine. Drug-traffickers as a whole in La Castellane are reported to make between 50,000 and 60,000 euros a day as of 2015.
Aftermath
Shortly after the February incident, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, who was visiting Marseille, called it an example of "apartheid", whereby French citizens who live in such neighbourhoods feel excluded from society.