France’s new conservative interior minister has declared war on drug gangs and warned that the country risks becoming a “Mexicanised” narco-state after a 15-year-old was killed in a mass brawl and gunfight between rival dealers in Poitiers.

Bruno Retailleau was speaking during a visit to Rennes, Brittany, where a five-year-old was critically injured after being hit in the head by a stray bullet at the end of last month.

Barely 24 hours after the minister left the city, a 19-year-old man died on Saturday in a stabbing in the Maurepas neighbourhood of Rennes, which police say is known for drug dealing. That evening, a 29-year-old man was seriously injured when he was stabbed five times in the city centre.

Once associated mainly with Marseilles, gun battles between rival drug gangs have become frequent in Grenoble and now appear to be spreading to other previously peaceful provincial cities including Poitiers, Clermont-Ferrand, Valence and Villeurbanne.

Both victims and perpetrators are increasingly young. In a shootout and mass street brawl in Poitiers on Thursday night, a 15-year-old boy was killed when he was shot in the head and four other people, including two teenagers, were seriously injured.“It began with a shooting at a restaurant and ended in a fight between rival gangs that involved several hundred people,” Retailleau said. “There is no doubt that it was drug-related.”“Narco-scum [drug traffickers] today have no limits,” the minister said. “This isn’t happening in South America but in Rennes, in Poitiers, in parts of western France that once enjoyed a reputation for peace and quiet. The choice we have today is between general mobilisation or the Mexicanisation of the country.”Marseilles has had 17 drug-related killings this year, which police believe are part of a turf warALAMYThe new government formed by Michel Barnier, the conservative prime minister and former Brexit negotiator for the EU, is under increasing pressure to act as escalating gang violence prompts growing public outrage.Marseilles has had 17 drug-related killings this year, which police believe are part of a turf war between two rival gangs, one known as the DZ Mafia and the other calling itself the New Blacks.A 14-year-old boy was allegedly hired as a hitman in the Mediterranean port city last month to carry out a revenge murder for a jailed drug dealer. The boy is accused of shooting dead a taxi driver who refused to wait for him while he looked for his target.Another boy aged 15, also allegedly recruited by the same convict to set fire to a rival dealer’s front door, was killed before he could do so.