Friend of French rapper SCH shot dead after concert

A friend of French rapper SCH was shot dead early Monday after leaving a club in the south of the country where the musician had just performed, a source close to the case told AFP.

Another person was wounded in the shooting outside La Dune club in La Grande Motte, a popular seaside resort whose synagogue was attacked in a suspected terror attack Saturday.

Unknown assailants opened fire with an automatic weapon on a car regularly used by the 31-year-old Marseille singer whose real name is Julien Schwarzer.

Both men inside were hit.

Police said the shots were fired from another car carrying four passengers on a road running along the seafront that is busy in the daytime but deserted at night.

The dead man was hit twice in the chest with the other victim suffering life-threatening injuries, they said.

A source close to the investigation said the shooting bore the hallmarks of the bloody score-settling between drug gangs in Marseille, France's second-biggest city, that left 49 people dead last year.

SCH's label, Rec. 118, declined to comment when contacted by AFP.

Police cordoned off the area, with heavily-armed gendarmes patrolling at a nearby roundabout.

SCH is currently on tour with several concerts scheduled over the next few months, including in Paris's 20,000-capacity Accor Arena.

The nightclub where SCH performed Sunday is where another rapper, PLK, punched a policeman in 2022. He was later jailed for a year.

La Grande Motte, near Montpellier, has about 8,500 permanent residents, but the population swells during the summer tourist season.

On Saturday, a man draped in a Palestinian flag started fires and caused an explosion near a synagogue in the town in what authorities say was a anti-Semitic attack. A police officer was injured.

The suspect, a 33-year-old Algerian, was arrested after a shootout with police in nearby Nimes in which he was wounded.