PARIS: A Tunisian national was shot dead by his neighbour in the south of France, the prosecutor in the Draguignan commune said in a statement, adding that the incident was being investigated as a racially motivated crime.
The victim, who was said to be “possibly 35” but has not been officially identified, was killed late on Saturday in the town of Puget-sur-Argens. A 25-year-old Turkish national was also shot in the hand by the man and taken to hospital.
The incident comes one month after the fatal stabbing of Aboubakar Cisse, a 22-year-old man from Mali, in a mosque in the southern town of La Grand-Combe, amid rising racism in France.
France’s interior minister Bruno Retailleau, in a post on X on Monday, said that “racism must be severely punished” and that the shooting was “intolerable.” Retailleau’s critics said that his declarations on migration and Islam had contributed towards rising levels of hate crime.
Last year, French police recorded an 11% rise in racist, xenophobic or anti-religious crimes, according to official data published in March.
In a statement late on Sunday, the prosecutor said the suspect in the weekend shooting was a 53-year-old who practises sports shooting. He had published hateful and racist content on his social media account before and after killing his neighbour, the prosecutor added.
France has the largest Muslim population in Europe, numbering more than 6 million and making up about 10% of the country’s population.
Politicians across the political spectrum, including President Emmanuel Macron, have attacked what they describe as Islamist separatism in a way that rights groups have said stigmatises Muslims and amounts to discrimination.
