4 dead in French school attack

BLASTS HAVE BEEN HEARD AT SIEGE SITE.
APPEARS POLICE ARE TRYING TO STORM FLAT.

The police siege of a building in Toulouse where a man suspected of killing seven people is holed up has entered a second day.

Late on Wednesday gunfire and at least one explosion were heard at the block of flats in the north of the city.

Earlier, three more blasts were heard, accompanied by flashes of orange light.

Mohammed Merah, 23, is suspected of killing four people at a Jewish school last Monday and three soldiers in two attacks last week.

The earlier blasts sent shockwaves around the quiet residential streets around the building, reports the BBC's Christian Fraser in Toulouse.

After the first explosions, deputy mayor Jean-Pierre Havrin told local media that "negotiations have finished and the assault has begun".

However, sources from the French interior ministry were later quoted as saying said this was only the beginning of an operation to put pressure on Merah.

Continue reading the main story
Mohammed Merah
French citizen of Algerian extraction, aged 23
Has criminal record in France for non-terrorist crimes
Has described himself as an al-Qaeda member and has spent time in Afghanistan and Pakistan
Profile: Mohammed Merah
French shootings: What we know

"They [the blasts] were moves to intimidate the gunman who seems to have changed his mind and does not want to surrender," interior ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet told Reuters.

Police had been negotiating with Merah but had not convinced him to surrender.

Police surrounded Merah's block after two officers were shot at when they tried to get into his flat early on Wednesday morning.

Officials say he is heavily armed with a Kalashnikov high-velocity rifle, a mini-Uzi 9mm machine pistol, several handguns and possibly grenades.

Street lights had been switched off in the vicinity of the building on Wednesday evening.

The five-storey block of flats has been evacuated, and police also moved residents from nearby buildings.

Elsewhere in the city, police are hunting for accomplices and have detained several members of Merah's family.

His mother was taken to the scene on Wednesday in the hope that she could persuade him to surrender, but she told police that she had no influence over her son.

Continue reading the main story Hunt for French killer
France has seen an unprecedented security clampdown after a lone gunman killed seven people, including three children, in three separate attacks in the south-west of the country.

Police tracked down the main suspect after investigating the movements of a stolen scooter used by the killer to make his escape following shootings in Toulouse and nearby Montauban.

6 March: Scooter stolenA Yamaha T-Max scooter that proves key to tracking down Mohammad Merah, the main suspect in the targeted killings, is stolen.
Police say Merah or an associate later contacted a garage to find out how to switch off the stolen bike's GPS tracker device.
After the attacks began, inquiries were also made about how the bike could be resprayed, and suspicious garage staff contacted the police.

11 March: Gunman strikesFrench soldier Imad Ibn-Ziaten is lured to a meeting in Toulouse after advertising his motorbike for sale.
The suspect apparently uses his brother's email address to arrange a meeting with Sgt Ibn-Ziaten. The paratrooper, who is not in uniform, is shot dead at close range.
Police say the weapons used to kill the soldier were the same as those employed in the subsequent attacks in Montauban and Toulouse.

15 March: Double killingFour days later, the gunman strikes again using the same weapons and riding the stolen scooter.
The assassin targets paratroopers in the nearby garrison town of Montauban. Abel Chennouf (left) and Mohamed Legouade are killed as they wait by a cash machine. A third soldier is critically injured.
Police say the killer is a meticulous operator. The clip for the gun used in all three attacks has no fingerprints or DNA on it.

19 March: Jewish children killedAnother four days pass before the killer targets a Jewish school in Toulouse.
Arriving on the scooter, the killer guns down Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, his two sons Gabriel (aged four) and Arieh (five), and seven-year-old Myriam Monsonego at close range.
Reports suggest the killer wore a video camera, apparently to record his actions. A crash helmet and visor hid his identity.

21 March: Suspect corneredAn email address used by the suspected killer leads the police to this apartment block in Toulouse.
A raid on the apartment on the first floor is launched in the early hours of the morning. Police officers who knock on the door of an apartment are fired on - but not seriously hurt.
The heavily armed gunman gives up one of his guns in exchange for a mobile phone to speak to police. Residents in the apartment block are evacuated from the area.
The stand-off continues.

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No regret

Anti-terror chief Francois Molins said on Wednesday that Merah planned to kill again.

"If he's telling the truth, he would have left his house this morning and he would have once again killed any soldier that he came across," he said.

Mr Molins said the suspect had expressed no regret for the killings, but had said he wanted to kill more people and "bring France to its knees".

Merah has said he acted to "avenge Palestinian children" and said he would give himself up.

Merah claimed to have received al-Qaeda training in Pakistan's Waziristan area, and also said he had been to Afghanistan.

His activities in Afghanistan are still unclear.

Afghan officials told the BBC he had been jailed in Kandahar for planting bombs in 2007, but escaped in a Taliban-led break-out in 2008.

Nicolas Sarkozy: "The soldiers were targeted because they were part of the French army"
Other Afghan sources cast doubt on the claims, saying the man jailed in Kandahar might have been a different person with the same name.

The killings took place in and around Toulouse in three separate incidents earlier this month.

On 11 March, a soldier was shot and killed while waiting to see a man about selling his motorcycle.

Days later, two soldiers were shot and killed and a third was wounded while waiting at a cash machine.

Then earlier this week, three children and an adult were shot and killed outside a Jewish school.

The four Jewish victims were buried in an emotional funeral in Jerusalem on Wednesday.

Also on Wednesday, President Nicolas Sarkozy attended a memorial for the three murdered soldiers at a military base in Montauban near Toulouse.

http://news.sky.com/home/world-news/article/16193987

One less psycho in the world.

Not Born Yesterday wrote:http://news.sky.com/home/world-news/article/16193987

One less psycho in the world.

Thanks NBY what a trail of tragedy he left.

http://www.care2.com/causes/student-beaten-near-jewish-school-in-paris.html

Student Beaten Near Jewish School in Paris


by Kristina Chew
March 27, 2012
2:00 pm
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A 12-year-old boy was beaten by youths shouting anti-Semitic phrases outside the Jewish school he attends in Paris on Monday, even though security around Jewish schools and synagogues in France has been increased after Mohammed Merah killed three children and a rabbi last week outside the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse in southwestern France. The boy was beaten in Paris as he left his school according to the Associated Press via the New York Times; he was about 100 meters from the school, out of sight from police, when the assault occurred.

The attack makes it all too clear that tensions remain high in France after the killings.

Merah, who was shot dead after a 32-hour siege last week, had filmed himself killing seven people including three French paratroopers in southwestern France. On Monday, the Paris bureau of Al-Jazeera received a video entitled “Al-Qaeda Attaque la France [Al-Qaeda Attacks France]” that appears to contain footage of the three attacks. Al-Jazeera, which is based on Qatar, has said that it will not air the video and issued a statement that the video did not include any information that was not already in the public domain, and that it does not accord with the station’s “code of ethics for broadcast.”

French president Nicholas Sarkozy had sent out a “public plea” for the video not to be shown, says the BBC, and vowed that he would “do all he could to block the transmission of the video should any other media outlet attempt to show it.” Relatives of those killed aired the same pleas. Imad Ibn Ziaten, the mother of the first paratrooper killed, told AFP that “My son was killed, a 30-year-old child and people want to show it as if it were a film. Please, I can’t see that.”

The videos were sent on a USB memory drive to Al-Jazeera in a package posted last Wednesday, March 21, when French police had surrounded Merah in his apartment in Toulouse. The package had been posted from outside of Toulouse and also contained a “letter written in poor French with spelling and grammar errors” dated March 21. Al-Jazeera’s Paris bureau chief, Zied Tarrouche, said that the video had “clearly been manipulated after the fact, with religious songs and recitations of Quranic verses laid over the footage.” Police are trying to determine who sent the package, Merah himself or an accomplice.

Al Jazeera also reports that, according to a Paris mosque, Merah’s family has decided to have him buried in Algeria, “to avoid a grave in France being attacked or becoming a place of pilgrimage.” Merah’s father, Mohamed Benalel Merah , described as “estranged” from him and living in Algeria, has reportedly said that he wants to file a lawsuit about his son’s death against France. Sarkozy said that he learned of this complaint “with indignation” and that “”Do we need to remind this man that his son filmed his crimes and diabolically made sure to send these despicable images to a television station?”.

French anti-terrorist judges are deliberating about whether to charge Abdelkader, Merah’s brother, as an accomplice, and whether anyone else was involved. Sarkozy has said that Merah was not part of a terrorist cell.

THE FATHER OF THEMURDERER IS TO SUE POLICE OVER WRONGFUL KILLING OF HIS SON?