Within the span of only three months in 2019, France saw nearly 250 murders, year marking a 16 per cent increase from the previous three-month period.
According to France’s Ministry of the Interior, a total of 248 murders were recorded between May 1st and July 1st, with July alone seeing 101 homicides including both deliberate acts of murder and assaults that resulted in the death of the victim, newspaper Le Figaro reports.
Some of the murders, according to the Information, Intelligence and Strategic Analysis Service on Organized Crime (SIRASCO), can be linked to organised criminal activity, with the organisation claiming that revenge killings were becoming more common, many of them contract killings.
At the end of last month, another gang conflict claimed the lives of three people in a shooting in Ollioules, with one of the victims having been a tourist caught in the crossfire.
Domestic abuse has also claimed the lives of many in France, with 121 women killed in 2018 as a result of domestic violence.
In one particularly brutal case, a woman was murdered last month by her husband who crushed her with his car against a wall, while in another case a pregnant woman in Marignane was found shot to death in her car with bullets in her abdomen.
France has also seen several high-profile murder cases involving migrants in the last several months. In one case a Pakistani illegal migrant was arrested in Valenton after the body of a local woman was found in the trunk of her own car a month prior. 23-year-old Sandra B. had been suffocated to death, according to investigators.
A month later a Syrian migrant was arrested in south-western France following the discovery of the body of 24-year-old Johanna Blanes.
Blanes, who had suffered from a mild mental handicap, had been returning from a nightclub before her murder. She had been beaten, strangled, and likely raped, according to investigators.