One ten year old child lost his life last night possibly from crossfire in the city of Nîmes in the south of France and specifically in Pichevan, a suburb with intense activity of drug dealers, as announced today by the Minister of the Interior of France, Gérald Darmanin.

“This is a tragedy that will not go unpunished. The police have already arrested several traffickers in recent weeks and will increase their presence,” the minister wrote on social media X (formerly Twitter).

Shootings associated with drug trafficking they occur throughout France, but are more frequent in the French South and testify to the extent of violence between gangs to control drug outlets.

“Following an exchange of gunfire in the area of ​​Pichevan, west of Nîmes, a ten-year-old child lost his life this evening (last Monday). A man was injured by bullets, but his life is not in danger,” explained this morning the prosecutor of Nîmes, Cécile Gensac.

According to AFP sources, the boy was in the back seat of a vehicle that was targeted as it passed through this neighborhood around 11:30 p.m. It ended after he was transferred to a hospital in Nîmes. The injured person is the driver of the vehicle and the boy’s uncle. Another child who was also sitting in the back seat of the car is safe and unharmed.

This Pishevan neighborhood is the same one where a 39-year-old man was shot in January in a drug-related incident.

According to information from former Nîmes prosecutor Eric Morel, approx 15 cases for settling accounts they claimed the lives of eight people in the city in 2020 and three more in 2021, most in three districts located in the Nîmes region (including Pichevan).

All three of these regions share alarming socio-economic indicators, with a poverty rate of up to 70% and very high unemployment.

“These murders are directly linked to the activity of drug-related gangs and settling accounts either in the context of the struggle for control of the area, or for profit,” Morel explained.

“We are in front of sometimes very young people who have access to weapons of war, especially assault rifles of the AK-47 or M-16 type,” he emphasized, estimating that Nîmes has become almost “a drug buying center”: every week , about 700 kilograms of cannabis resin that comes mainly from the Maghreb and tens of kilograms of cocaine from South America via Spain are transported from there to be resold, he explained.