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French government under pressure over Marseille gun deaths

   Marseille senator and mayor calls for army to deal with drug gangs after 19th gun-related death in the region this year
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   French Interior Minister Manuel Valls
   French interior minister Manuel Valls tells the press it is out of question to deploy soldiers in Marseille after the latest gun-related death in the city. Photograph: Patrick Kovarik/AFP/Getty Images

   The French government is under growing pressure to contain Marseille's deadly drug wars after the 19th gun-related death in the region this year.

   The latest casualty prompted a Socialist senator to call for the army to be sent in to control estates in the city.

   As Marseille prepares to become European capital of culture next year, the growing problem of drug dealers setting scores with AK-47s has blighted its public relations drive. On Wednesday, a 25-year-old known to police over drug-trafficking, was hit with Kalashnikov-fire as he travelled in the passenger seat of a Renault Twingo in the north of the city. It was the 14th gun-related death connected to drug gangs in Marseille since the start of this year, the 19th in the region. A few weeks earlier another 25-year-old who had recently been released from prison died in hospital after he was shot in the south of the city. This year's Marseille gang deaths already exceed the figures for the whole of 2011.

   The Socialist senator and mayor of two Marseille districts, Samia Ghali, warned: "It's now useless sending a coach of riot police to stop the dealers. When one is stopped, 10 more take up the flame. It's like fighting an ants' nest." She said faced with the heavy weapons used by the gangs, "only the army can intervene".

   Her comments embarrassed the Socialist government, which is already under pressure over how to handle security on France's most restive estates. Manuel Valls, the interior minister, dismissed Ghali's comments: "Its out of the question for the army to respond to these dramas and crimes." He said there was no "enemy within" against whom the French army would go to war on its own territory.
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   French government under pressure over Marseille gun deaths
   This article was published on the Guardian website at 18.33 BST on Thursday 30 August 2012. It was last modified at 20.30 BST on Tuesday 2 July 2013.