I won't be silenced, says French anti-drugs activist after murders of two brothers

Drugs gangs have a grip on Marseille, but Amine Kessaci says he has "no choice but to fight" after the violent deaths of his brothers.

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Amine Kessaci, 22, was writing in Le Monde newspaper a day after the funeral of his younger brother Mehdi, whose murder last week has been described by the government as a turning-point in France's drugs wars.

"Yesterday I lost my brother. Today I speak out," he wrote in his opinion piece.

"[The drugs-traffickers] strike at us in order to break, to tame, to subdue. They want to wipe out any resistance, to break any free spirit, to kill in the egg any embryo of revolt."

Mehdi Kessaci, 20, was shot dead last Wednesday as he parked his car in central Marseille in what appears to have been a warning or punishment aimed at his older brother, Amine, from the city's drugs gangs.