In a shocking incident that unfolded in Marseille, a southern French city, a 15-year-old boy was brutally murdered on Wednesday. Prosecutor Nicolas Bessone described the case as one of “unprecedented savagery,” revealing that the teenager was “stabbed 50 times” and burned alive, likely due to drug-related violence.
Marseille, despite being France’s second-largest city, is also one of its poorest and is plagued by drug-related violence.Bessone noted that both victims and perpetrators of such violence are becoming increasingly younger. The city has been witnessing a turf war between various clans, including DZ Mafia, for control of the highly profitable drug market, AFP news agency reported.
According to the prosecutor, the teenager had been hired by a 23-year-old prisoner to intimidate a competitor by setting fire to his door, with a promised payment of 2,000 euros. However, members of a rival gang spotted the teenager, repeatedly stabbed him, and then set him on fire.
In a related incident, the same prisoner recruited a 14-year-old minor to carry out a revenge attack and kill a member of the Blacks gang, promising a payment of 50,000 euros. The minor hired a 36-year-old driver, who ended up angering the minor and was subsequently killed.
Last week, a shooting incident occurred in a housing project located in the suburbs of Marseille, resulting in the deaths of two individuals and leaving four others wounded, according to the Metro citing local sources.
As reported by the French broadcaster BFM and the daily newspaper La Provence, “the victims, all men aged around 25 to 35, were in a building that was the target of shots fired from a Kalashnikov-type assault rifle.”
The two victims who sustained fatal injuries died instantly at the scene of the shooting.
This incident follows another shooting that took place in the same housing project on July 10, where a young man was shot and killed in what has been described as a likely ‘narco-homicide’.
The ongoing violence, which is attributed to conflicts over drug trafficking, has claimed a record-breaking 49 lives in 2023. With the addition of these two recent cases, the total number of drug-related killings in Marseille has increased to 17 since the beginning of the year, including nine narco-homicides.