The multicultural French city of Dijon has become a warzone as rival Algerian and Chechen criminal gangs battle it out for control of the areas lucrative drug trade.
Images from the culturally enriched city show masked members of the two rival Muslim gangs wielding assault rifles and pistols vowing revenge against the other while disturbing footage from Tuesday showed the city’s skies black with smoke as explosions and gunfire could be heard.
The fighting erupted in the once quiet city in the east of France after a Chechen teenager was assaulted last Wednesday, the 16-year-old has since died and armed French police have been deployed to Dijon in an effort to restore some semblance of law and order.
Decades of mass immigration from North Africa as well as other Muslim regions such as Chechnya, a restive autonomous region of Russia, have reduced many large areas of France’s cities and suburbs into dangerous, gang-controlled ghettos.
In relation to the latest outbreak of violence a Dijon police source said on Monday:
“Chechen gangs linked to the drug trade and other criminal activity have mobilised to take part in battles with other gangs.
Weapons including Kalashnikovs, axes and baseball bats are being carried openly on the streets, and live ammunition is being fired.
People are terrified.”
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