French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault has asked two cabinet ministers to pay urgent visits to Corsica in the wake of another high-profile assassination on the island.

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Business leader Jacques Nacer was shot dead by a masked gunman on Wednesday night as he was closing up the clothes shop he owns in Ajaccio, Corsican police said.

Nacer, president of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of South Corsica, is the 17th person killed on the “Island of Beauty” this year and the fourth in less than a month.

Ayrault directed Interior Minister Manuel Valls and Justice Minister Christiane Taubira to visit Corsica in a bid to bring the spiral of violence to an end.

The prime minister said he wanted to demonstrate “the determination of the government to combat the violence on the island.”

The two ministers were to meet with justice and elected officials in Ajaccio.

Nacer, 59, was secretary general of the Athletic Club Ajaccio football club and new well the club’s president, Alain Orsoni, the former nationalist leader who has himself been the target of assassination attempts, Le Parisien.fr reported.

One of Orsoni’s associate’s, the lawyer Antoine Sollarco, was killed in October.

The masked gunman shot Nacer several times before feeling on foot without being caught, Ajaccio prosecutor Xavier Bonhomme said.

The victim died before he could be treated at hospital.

Bonhomme described the attack as “a horrible crime”.

French President Francois Hollande condemned the violence on Corsica, stating that it would be necessary to seek out the “root causes” of the series of assassinations.

“We must, with the justice department, shine a light on what has happened and seek out the guilty,” Hollande told reporters in Paris after news of the latest murder emerged.