The perpetrators of the shooting in which two men were killed on Sunday in a town in Seine-Saint-Denis, a poor department east of Paris, were still being sought Monday morning, AFP learned from a police Source. A little after 6 p.m., two men arrived on the square located near a cultural center, in the heart of a housing estate in the town of Sevran. One of them, carrying a handgun, shot the two victims several times, according to information transmitted by the same Source.
The two men involved in this shooting fled on foot, leaving an automatic weapon magazine and 18 cartridge cases near the victims, adds this police Source. Died even before help arrived, one of the two men was shot in the head. Six bullets hit the second victim, who died despite the intervention of firefighters, a second police Source told AFP.
The victims were aged 35 and 31, according to Paris police chief Laurent Nuñez, and were known for violence and drug trafficking, a police Source told AFP.
This double homicide occurred less than 48 hours after a shooting which left one dead and several injured in the same town of Seine-Saint-Denis, facts attributed by the authorities to crime linked to drug trafficking. During the night from Friday to Saturday, a 28-year-old man was killed and four others injured during a shooting in the city of Beaudottes, an emblematic district of this town of 52,000 inhabitants located 25 km northeast of Paris. Three other gunshot wounds also showed up at the hospital later in the night, one of them leaving before being examined.
After Marseille, the second largest city in France, Sevran was the subject of an anti-drug operation “Place Net XXL” on March 25, with the aim of stopping trafficking. In this city, the Rougemont city deal point had been “eradicated”, the police headquarters said on Saturday.
“Obviously we are aware that when we do that we destabilize traffic, we create greed and sometimes there are clashes (…) to recover territories,” said Laurent Nuñez on Sunday. “But we will still continue,” he added. “There are still many battles to be won,” but the fight against drug trafficking is a “war that is far from being lost,” the Paris police prefect said.
A total of 315 homicides or attempted homicides linked to drug trafficking were recorded in France, between January and November 2023, in police zones, an increase of 57% over one year, according to the national police.
