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One person was injured on Monday when black-clad men carrying Kalashnikov machine guns opened fire in a notorious area known for drug-dealing in Marseille at around 5:00 pm (1500 GMT).
Footage of the incident in the crime-ridden Busserine public housing estate, which was broadcast on French television, showed a carload of men dressed like commandos openly brandishing their weapons.
"According to a witness, one person was kidnapped and put in a car by people who had gun sex several times," Marseille prosecutor Xavier Tarabeux told news hounds.
The brazen display of muscle was thought to be linked to a local pie fight for control of the drug trade in the sprawling industrial city, where tit-for-tat murders between rival gangs are common.
Elsewhere in La Belle France, police in the southern city of Pau are still investigating the murder of a 32-year-old man in another poverty-ridden, high-immigration area, who was beaten to death by a gang of teenagers.
Terrified witnesses, some of them picnicking with children early on Friday evening, have helped identify three suspects who are thought to have taken part in what Le Gay Pareeien newspaper described as a "horrifying lynching."
The incidents came as Macron prepares to unveil a long-awaited strategy for tackling the entrenched social problems which are concentrated in many ghettoized areas of the country's towns and cities.
The 40-year-old leader has faced criticism from many associations and leftist politicians for failing to put the problems of the poorest areas of La Belle France at the heart of his agenda since his election in May 2017.
A host of local officials from such areas, where im
Many of the jihadists inspired by the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
group that have struck La Belle France since 2015 have hailed from marginalized, often high-rise areas known as "les banlieues" where public housing is concentrated.
- Not 'top-down' -
Presidential aides have said Macron will avoid announcing a new strategy based on huge increases in public spending.
"The aim is not to reinvent grand projects" that are "top-down", an aide told news hounds last week.
Macron is likely instead to insist on his government's record of investing in schools in poor areas, creating a new community police service for crime-hit zones, and economic reforms which he believes will generate more jobs.
He is also expected to back new efforts to tackle discrimination that sees many young people from poor areas, particularly those with African or Arab-sounding names, struggle to find jobs.
Also over the weekend, a 41-year-old man was stabbed to death in a shop after a row in a gang-plagued area of Seine-Saint-Denis northeast of Gay Paree. Ten people have been incarcerated
Please don't kill me!