A 24-year-old woman has died after being hit by a stray bullet in an attack on a drug-dealing hotspot in the French Mediterranean city of Marseille, prosecutors said on Tuesday.

The woman was hit late on Sunday evening when a burst of fire from a Kalashnikov rifle tore through her apartment building. She was declared brain-dead on Monday.

Around 40 people have been killed in drug-related violence in Marseille this year — a situation described as a “bloodbath” by city authorities.

“This is a total tragedy,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told broadcaster France Bleu during a visit to the port city, which has a history of drug-related violence.

Sunday’s shooting raises new concerns about the impact of drug crime in Marseille, which is set to host fixtures for the Rugby World Cup and a visit from Pope Francis in the coming weeks.

Darmanin said it would take “a lot of police” to tackle the violence between drug gangs.

The minister was in Marseille to open a new building for an elite police unit called the RAID.

The dead woman was hit by a bullet that pierced the plywood surround of her third-floor window, the city’s chief prosecutor, Dominique Laurens, said.

“She was admitted to hospital with a serious wound to the head and in danger for her life. She died in the early hours of Tuesday,” she added.

Two other women, aged 79 and 86, and a 71-year-old man escaped unharmed after their apartments were also struck by bullets.

Urban renewal

All had been inadvertently caught up in an attack on a drug-dealing hotspot in the Saint-Thys district.

The area is classed as a priority security zone but is not in Marseille’s most deprived northern neighbourhoods.

Investigators found 23 Kalashnikov cartridge casings on the scene.

Marseille, one of France’s poorest cities, is the subject of an urban renewal scheme worth billions of euros that has become a pet project of President Emmanuel Macron.

Darmanin said the security forces were not the only ones working to tackle Marseilles problems.

He hailed “the very important work being done by the city council and the government in matters of education, town planning, integration, parents exerting authority over their children and (respect for) authority in schools”.

He criticised drug users, saying they were “giving rise to this kind of score-settling” between rival gangs.

On Monday, a 56-year-old man was killed in a shooting in northern Marseille, police sources and the local prosecutor’s office told AFP.

The victim, targeted in his car with machine gun fire by two people riding a motorcycle who then fled the scene, had a police record of drug trafficking and theft charges, Laurens said in a statement.

The motorcycle was found burned shortly after the attack.

Two more people uninvolved in the drug trade were killed earlier this year, a 43-year-old woman and a 63-year-old man.