One person was killed and five others wounded in northeastern France when several masked gunmen opened fire at a wedding ceremony, police sources said on Sunday.

Sources suggested that the attack in the northeastern city of Thionville was linked to a settling of scores between drug traffickers.

The shooting took place at a reception hall overnight Saturday to Sunday, with around a hundred people in attendance.

Two people were seriously injured and one of them was in a critical condition. The perpetrators of the shooting have fled the scene.

“It was during a wedding,” a police source said. “At a quarter past one in the morning, a group of people went outside to smoke in front of the hall, and then three heavily armed men arrived and opened fire in their direction.”

The assailants arrived in a 4X4 vehicle, “probably a BMW”, the source said.

It was not immediately clear where the vehicle had come from. Thionville is located close to the borders of Luxembourg and Germany.

Members of law enforcement believe that a settling of scores linked to drug trafficking was behind the violence.

“The wedding was not targeted as such, it was people who were at the wedding,” the source said.

A glass door pierced with bullet holes could be seen at the scene on Sunday morning.

In the neighbouring town of Villerupt shootings between rival gangs at a drug dealing point left five people injured in May 2023.