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Marseille battles image as France's murder capital

   By Tom Esslemont BBC News, Marseille
   Pictures on a school wall in Marseille, France Schools in the deprived
   north of the city have reduced the drop-out rate
   Continue reading the main story
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     * France country profile

   France's second city, Marseille, has become synonymous with
   drug-related violence in recent years but local politicians are
   fighting to change that image.
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   According to police figures, a third of all the murders in France in
   2012 took place in the Marseille region.
   Blocks of flats in Marseille Much of the violence occurs in the poor
   northern suburbs
   Children in a built-up area of Marseille Parents say young children are
   vulnerable to the drug gangs
   A view of the Tour St Jean in Marseille The city fathers want to
   project a new image of Marseille as a city of culture

   Victims are usually in their late teens and twenties. Many of them are
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   In the early 1960s, as the war for Algeria's independence ended,
   hundreds of thousands of French people returned from former colonies in
   North Africa. Many settled in Marseille where new high-rises were built
   to accommodate them.

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   "The city's geography has a lot to do with its problems," says
   sociologist Laurent Mucchielli at the University of Aix-Marseille,
   referring not only to the seaside location, but to social segregation
   between a poorer north and a richer south.
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   they have access to a cultural education."

   In the run-up to mayoral elections in Marseille next year, opposition
   parties have taken on the centre-right municipality on issues of social
   deprivation.
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   Were the anti-immigrant FN to capitalise on the problem in a
   multi-ethnic city like Marseille it would worry the governing left and
   the centre-right UMP, which controls the city mayoralty.
   Jobs drive
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     My political vision is for everyone to live together as a community”

   End Quote Jean-Claude Gaudin Mayor of Marseille

   But the city's UMP mayor, Jean-Claude Gaudin, denies his municipality
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   Outside his grand office by the port, new museums and galleries have
   opened up - all part of Marseille's year as the European Capital of
   Culture.

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   From her apartment, where pictures of Nabil hang on the wall, you can
   just make out the sound of the trains heading to and from the beating
   heart of Marseille.

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