A young French campaigner, who set up an association to help victims of drugs violence and took their cause to President Emmanuel Macron, has lost a second brother to suspected criminal gangs in Marseille.
Amine Kessaci's 20-year-old brother Mehdi was parking his car in the centre of the city when a motorcycle drew up and the pillion passenger opened fire with a 9mm pistol.
Their elder brother, Brahim, was murdered in 2020. He was shot and his charred body found in a burned-out car, a common method in gang killings known locally as a barbecue.
Marseille is renowned for worsening drugs wars, with rival gangs from high-immigration neighbourhoods in the north of the city battling over turf.
While Amine's murdered elder brother, Brahim, was known to have become involved with drugs gangs, investigators say that was not true of Mehdi, who had ambitions to become a policeman.
They fear the murder may have been a warning aimed at Amine.
That hypothesis is absolutely not being ruled out, said Marseille chief prosecutor Nicolas Bessone on French radio.
Amine, in response to his elder brother's murder, founded an association called Conscience, designed to help young people escape the clutches of powerful drugs gangs.
Now 22 years old, he lives under police protection after receiving multiple death threats.
It's a heartbreaking situation for the family, and the community is left reeling from the violence that continues to plague the city.
