Iran has belatedly admitted that two of its nationals were killed in an armed attack in northern France last December and is now demanding compensation from the French government, deputy foreign minister Vahid Jalalzadeh said on February 4.

Two Iranian undocumented migrants, Hamid Ghorbani and Hadi Rostami, were killed in a shooting in Dunkirk, France, on December 14, 2024, outside a refugee camp by an unnamed French national. At least five people were killed in the December attack. A 22-year-old man claiming to be the gunman later handed himself into a local police station. The shooter told police he killed a person in town, and then he attacked the Loon-Plage refugee camp, killing two security guards and two Iranian nationals. The shooting comes amid growing tensions in France between locals and illegal migrants who have entered the country in recent years attempting to use the country as a transit point for the UK and Ireland. 

The attacker first killed one man and then drove to the refugee camp and proceeded to shoot a crowd of migrants standing outside the camp, according to a previous Sky News report in December.

"Initially, we thought he would fire in the air, and then he loaded the gun and aimed at us. We saw Israel [the Islamic Angel of Death]," said one survivor.

"We saw death with our own eyes. It was God's will that we survived. In one day, we saw death twice," the television station reported the Iranian men as saying.

The surviving Iranian men, speaking with Sky News, referred to themselves as“Kurdish” despite carrying Iranian nationality and were part of a large group of people from the West of the country and northern Iraq who use their ethnicity to enter Europe illegally.  

The majority of the Iranians are looking to enter the United Kingdom unlawfully but have faced increased difficulties following an increased security arrangement between the UK, France, Belgium, Germany and Iraq signed in recent months by Keir Starmer and the Iraqi Prime Minister Shia al-Sudani to tackle the Kurdish gangs. 

"From the moment we learned of the deaths of our two citizens, we have been actively engaged with French authorities. We summoned the French ambassador to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and our ambassador in Paris has also communicated directly with French officials, conveying our strong concerns,” he said.  

The Iranian minister did not explain why the Iranian nationals were living illegally in France and what measures the Iranian government has taken to stop the illegal migrant route which stems from the Islamic Republic. 

He later said the Iranian state would repatriate the bodies of the two Iranian nationals to Iran and that they expect the French government to provide compensation to the victims' families.

"We hope that in the next few weeks, the bodies of these two Iranian citizens will be transferred to the country and compensation will be paid to their families by the French government," he said.

At the same time, France has repeatedly called on Iran to release three French nationals imprisoned in Iran. Three French citizens are known to be detained in Iran, namely Cécile Kohler and her partner Jacques Paris, who were arrested in May 2022 and are accused of espionage, and Olivier Grondeau, who was arrested in October 2022 and sentenced to five years for "conspiracy against the Islamic Republic".

In the latest remarks, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot called on the European Union countries to impose sanctions on Iranian officials involved in the detention of French nationals.

The debacle of the dead illegal migrants comes amid a push by the French government led by President Emmanuel Macron who is seeking to put pressure on Tehran over its detention of the French tourists.

The National Assembly of France on February 3 passed a resolution calling on the French government as well as the EU to designate the IRGC as terror group.

The resolution, introduced by MP Constance Le Grip from the governing Renaissance Party said, “the central role of the IRGC in the repression carried out by the regime against the Women Life Freedom Movement and against all oppositions.”

She noted that the IRGC “controls two-thirds of the Iranian economy” and “guides, supports and funds terrorist organizations both within the country and elsewhere in the region.”