Two days after the shooting in which five people were injured, three of them seriously, police arrested a suspect near the site of the shooting.

Nancy prosecutor François Capin-Dulhoste announced that the suspect is the prime suspect in the case. "He was arrested at 6.05am near the home of his two brothers and taken into police custody," the magistrate said.

The suspect had fled in a car on Saturday. The vehicle was found burnt out in Fameck in the Moselle department.

The site of the shooting is a known drug trafficking location in the town with the case likely being linked to a drug story.

"Lately, the drug traffickers have brought out the camping chairs, they have put the scales to weigh the drugs on the window panes of our technical services," 35-year-old mayor Pierrick Spizak (PCF) lamented to the AFP news agency. "What happened was unfortunately predictable and it is not that we were not warned".

"Yes, the state is responsible and guilty for the neglect of our territory," he added in a statement published on his Facebook page, speaking of "extremely serious events with cross-border implications".