Drug gangs dominate entire residential areas in Marseille in the south of France, there are regular fatal settlements, but now the French police are hitting back in the drug war. A total of 550 special units are said to have assisted local police officers to carry out 45 raids in 30 neighborhoods, mainly on the outskirts of the city. Frédérique Camilleri, police prefect of the Bouches-du-Rhône department, shared this.
The three-day action over the past week has resulted in 29 arrests, about 3,000 people being checked. The operation against drug crime in France’s second largest city was commissioned by French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin. But there were also operations in the nearby towns of Martigues, Port-de-Bouc or Arles, reports the French news agency AFP.
Operations such as these are a new method of the Ministry of the Interior to combat drug trafficking more effectively, reports broadcaster Europe 1. The ministry wants to set up eleven extra mobile units to take more explicit action in other metropolises in the coming weeks against drug trafficking and other crime. . More than 20 places from which drugs were sold, with daily turnover of several tens of thousands of euros, would be closed at least temporarily, Camilleri told Europe 1.
The large presence of mobile units in Marseille was intended to facilitate the action of the local police, with street blockades partly closing off neighbourhoods. These units also protected the police against attacks by criminals. At the beginning of June, police in the north of the city were shelled with an assault weapon as they turned out for a burglary report. Six men were then arrested and several weapons were seized.
Ten people have already been killed in settlements in the large vicinity of Marseille this year.
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