Three young men were shot dead early Sunday morning in a neighbourhood in eastern Marseille, firefighters and a police source said.
Unknown men in a car opened fire on another vehicle with five young men in it, the police source said. Three of the occupants were fatally shot.
The shooting is said to have occurred at the entrance of a nightclub at around 05:40 on Sunday morning.
Firefighters, who intervened shortly before 06:00 am, pronounced the three victims, men aged about 25, dead at the scene. Two other occupants of the car targeted by the gunfire were able to flee.
The attackers were able to leave the scene in their vehicle.
Firefighters said they responded a short time later to a burning car found not far from the scene of the attack, though it was not immediately clear if it was the attackers’ car.
The Bouches-du-Rhône police prefect, Frederique Camilleri, went to the scene of this new shooting, as settlements of accounts against a backdrop of drug trafficking are on the rise in France’s second city.
The judicial police have been seized with the investigation.
