French police sealed off a housing estate in Marseille after hooded gunmen opened fire on a police car with Kalashnikov rifles in what a senior local official suggested was an incident related to drug crime.

Gunmen have exchanged fire in a Marseille housing project, prompting police to close off the area in a search for the shooters on the same day that France’s prime minister planned to visit the city.

France’s prime minister has dismissed the view that his country is “sick” and insisted that it is both willing and able to carry out economic reforms.

French interior minister Manuel Valls insisted he stood by a controversial call for tens of thousands of ethnic Roma to be kicked out of the country.