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BREAKING NEWS: French police in standoff with suspect in Toulouse shootings
(CNN) – According to Interior Minister Claude Gueant, the suspect is a French national of Algerian origin who spent considerable time in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Gueant said the man said “he belongs to al Qaeda.”
The suspect and his brother apparently belong to the jihadist group, Forsane Alizza, or Knights of Glory. Very little is known about the group, which the French government banned in January for trying to recruit people to fight in Afghanistan.
Speaking to reporters at the scene, Gueant said the man wanted to avenge the deaths of Palestinian children and the presence of French troops abroad. The shootings began on March 11, when a paratrooper of North African origin arranged to meet a man in Toulouse to sell him a scooter which he had advertised online, revealing in the ad his military status. The police tracked down all 567 respondents to the ad and came across this person of interest.
France24 – Suspect of Algerian origin was in the DCRI’s sights
French president raises terror alert to its highest level in southwestern France.
Presidential election campaign on hold after targeted killing of Jewish school children in Toulouse.Deadly shooting kills four at Jewish school in Toulouse
Four people, including three children, have been killed after a man opened fire outside a Jewish school in the French city of Toulouse. Police say the bullets came from the same gun that was used last week in the murder of three soldiers.
City Prosecutor Michel Valet said a 30-year-old man, his two sons, aged three and six, and another child aged ten, were killed. A 17-year-old was also seriously injured. Valet told reporters the gunman “shot at everything he could see, children and adults, and some children were chased into the school” before he fled the scene on a black scooter.
Relatives named the adult killed as Jonathan Sandler, a Franco-Israeli from Jerusalem who “left last September for a two-year mission to teach Jewish subjects in Toulouse”, according to AFP.
“National tragedy”
Visiting the Ozar Ha Torah school, French President Nicolas Sarkozy described the shooting as a “national tragedy” and vowed to find the killer. He also announced a minute of silence in all French schools for Tuesday and said the state would throw its entire weight behind the investigation.
FRANCE 24 correspondent Chris Bockman reported from Toulous that the city was in “lockdown” as police searched for the gunman, he added: “This is a medieval city with narrow winding roads, where it is easy for a scooter to outrun a police car.”
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Feb. 15 – Two French soldiers killed in drive-by shooting Montauban
MONTAUBAN (France24/Reuters) – Two uniformed French soldiers were shot dead and a third seriously injured by a gunman on Thursday as they tried to withdraw money from a cash machine in the town of Montauban in southwest France, the defence ministry said.
Two paratroopers died on the spot after being shot in the head by the unidentified gunman on a scooter, who wore a helmet with the visor pulled down, police sources said. The third soldier was rushed to hospital in Montauban where he was in a critical condition, a ministry spokesman said.
The shooter did not take any money and there was no immediate indication of the motive for the rare attack. The shooting took place at 2 p.m. (1300 GMT) near the barracks of the 17th parachute regiment, to which the victims — aged between 24 and 28 — belonged.
Shootings in Toulouse and Montauban: What we know
(BBC News) – Three gun attacks which left seven people dead and two wounded have sparked a security alert in south-western France, with fears that the same killer could be at work. In each case the attacker is said to have been a gunman on a moped, using the same gun, striking in broad daylight.
All of the attacks took place within a radius of about 50km (30 miles), between the city of Toulouse and town of Montauban. The first two shootings saw soldiers targeted but the third took place at a school.
What the victims have in common is that they belong to, or are associated with, ethnic or religious minorities – North African, Caribbean and Jewish. That they were singled out is suggested by reports that, in at least one attack, the killer pushed aside a bystander to get to his victims.
A manhunt is under way and France has placed its national judicial police in charge of the investigation, with anti-terrorist investigators and specialists in serial crimes at its disposal. While little has been reported about the identity or motivation of, in the words of Le Figaro newspaper, the “most wanted man in France”, some of the strongest clues may have been left by the first attack.
Cyber trail
On Sunday 11 March, Imad Ibn-Ziaten, a 30-year-old staff sergeant in the 1st Airborne Transportation Regiment, was shot dead around 16:00 (15:00 GMT) behind a school in a quiet district of Toulouse.
According to Le Figaro, Sgt Ibn-Ziaten, who was not in uniform, was unwittingly waiting for his own killer. He had posted a small ad on a website to sell a Suzuki Bandit motorcycle, and the suspected gunman had arranged a meeting to see it.
The sergeant was found shot in the head, his motorcycle beside him.
Soldiers banned from wearing uniforms off base after attacks
Sarkozy woos extreme right voters and arouses anti-immigrant sentiment
(Washington Post) – Public opinion already has been aroused by a controversy over halal meat, or meat prepared according to Islamic tradition, and President Nicolas Sarkozy’s repeated promises to rein in the number of foreigners–chiefly Muslims–who sneak into France or are granted legal residence.
Against that background, Sarkozy traveled to Toulouse immediately after the shooting to display his concern. He was followed several hours later by Francois Hollande of the Socialist Party, his main opponent in the election later this spring.
Sarkozy was accompanied by Richard Pasquier, president of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions.
- Daily Beast – France’s Shocking Shooting Spree
Of course, many reactions of shock from all regions in the world:
- Netanyahu: Murder in French Jewish school a ‘despicable anti-Semitic’ attack
- Obama press statement
- France shooting is attack on all Jews, say U.S., European Jewish groups
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."