A large police operation took place early this Monday in the Gard, but also near Marseille and in the North.
It takes place as part of an investigation into shootings that occurred in Nîmes (Gard) at the beginning of the year against a background of narco-banditism.
More than 100 police officers were mobilized to carry out searches and arrests.
Midi Libre specifies that 15 arrests took place in Nîmes and others in the north of the country and in Ile-de-France as part of this operation.
On February 10, Kalashnikov fire in the Pissevin district, one of the poorest in France, left three people injured, one of them seriously, in Nîmes.
Fifteen days earlier, a similar shooting also took place.
She did not make a victim.
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The mayor (LR) of Nîmes, Jean-Paul Fournier, denounced "a war of rival gangs linked to arms and narcotics trafficking".
Residents of the neighborhood demonstrated on February 21 to launch an "appeal for help" to the authorities in the face of the increase in drug trafficking.
Recently, the interregional director of the judicial police, Eric Arella, underlined that the phenomenon of settling of scores against a background of narco-bandistime, on the decline in the Marseille region, is on the other hand increasing this year, especially in Nîmes and Perpignan ( Eastern Pyrenees).