Massive shootout sparks battle between ‘several HUNDRED people’ in France

A massive shootout linked to drug trafficking has left a teenager and four others, including two teenage girls, seriously wounded in western France, Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said on Friday, in the latest such gunfight to injure children.

The shootout erupted in front of a restaurant overnight in the western city of Poitiers, Retailleau told BFMTV/RMC radio.

‘What started as a shooting at a restaurant ended up in a fight between rival gangs that involved several hundred people’, Retailleau said.

Cops said that between 400 and 600 people were involved in the violence that escalated in the aftermath of the shootout.  

The 15-year-old boy who was shot in the head was between life and death, he said.

The minister warned that the country was at a ‘tipping point’ when it came to drug trafficking violence. 

‘We are at a tipping point and the choice we have today is a choice between general mobilisation or the Mexicanisation of the country,’ he said, citing Mexico’s deep problem with cartel violence.  

Léonore Moncond’huy, the mayor of Poitiers, said the incident was ‘a new episode of violence unacceptable for the neighbourhood’.

Retailleau added that he was planning to travel later in the day to the northwestern city of Rennes, where a five-year-old child was also between life and death after being shot on Saturday in another fire exchange related to drug trafficking.

More to follow.