Police used massive firepower Thursday to end the 32-hour siege of a killer whose murders of Jewish schoolchildren and soldiers traumatized France and briefly halted the presidential election campaign.
French polices officers arrive near a building where the chief suspect in an al-Qaida-linked killing spree is holed up in an apartment in Toulouse, France Thursday March 22, 2012. (AP)
The self-proclaimed al-Qaida militant died in an intense firefight as he tried to shoot his way out of his surrounded apartment in the southwestern city of Toulouse when officers from special police forces moved in.
An al-Qaida linked group, Jund al-Khilafah, claimed responsibility on jihadist websites for the shootings by a man whom French President Nicolas Sarkozy dubbed a "monster".
The seven killings shocked France, home to western Europe's largest Jewish and Muslim minorities, and raised questions about intolerance and security failures in the midst of a hard-fought presidential election campaign.
Mohamed Merah, who admitted shooting dead three soldiers and three children and a teacher at a Jewish school -- murders he filmed with a video camera -- opened fire when police from the elite RAID force stormed his flat.
Police said the 23-year-old burst out of the bathroom and shot at police before jumping out the window of his first-floor apartment, still firing as he fell, in a bid to escape.
France's chief anti-terror prosecutor, Francois Molins, said Merah was shot in the head while wearing a black djellaba, a traditional loose-fitting North African robe, and a bullet-proof vest.
Molins said police had been told to do everything possible to take Merah alive but had no choice when he opened fire "at an incredible rate".
"He literally launched an assault, rushing forward with a Colt .45 and continuing to fire as he jumped through the window, until he was shot in the head," Molins told journalists.
"He was dead by the time he hit the ground," a police source told AFP, while Interior Minister Claude Gueant said: "A RAID officer who is used to this kind of thing told me that he had never seen such a violent assault."
The streets of the residential area resounded with the sound of intense gunfire in a shattering finale to the standoff which began before dawn on Wednesday. A police source said around 300 shots were fired.
"It's the first time in my life I've seen someone, as we launch an assault, launch an assault against us," RAID head Amaury de Hauteclocque said.
Molins said five officers were wounded during the operation, including two during the initial pre-dawn raid on Wednesday, and three on Thursday, but that none of the injuries were life threatening.
He said police were searching for "any accomplices who may have convinced him to commit these acts or provided him with the means to commit them."
An autopsy was to be conducted on Merah's body at a specialist site in Toulouse, prosecutors said.
Sarkozy told a rally in Strasbourg as he got back on his re-election campaign trail that "these crimes were the work of a fanatic and a monster".
He vowed earlier in a televised address to crack down on extremism, saying he wanted legal action against people who regularly consult jihadist websites or travel abroad for indoctrination.
Molins said Merah had taken responsibility for the shootings, claiming to be avenging Palestinian deaths and opposing the French military's involvement in Afghanistan and France's ban on full-face veils.
And he said the militant had claimed to have been trained by al-Qaida in Waziristan, a tribal area of Pakistan known as a haven for Islamist insurgents connected to Taliban guerrillas.
Molins said he had gone to the region twice and on one occasion been arrested by Afghan police and handed over to US army troops, who put him on a flight back to France.
A US intelligence official told AFP that Merah was on America's "no-fly" list, which is put together by the US authorities and bans those on it from boarding flights to or from the country.
Officials in Afghanistan and Pakistan told AFP they could not immediately trace the gunman as having visited either country or having been held by US-led forces.
Jund al-Khilafah said in its statement that "the Frenchman carried out an operation that shook the foundations of the Zionist Crusaders."
"We claim responsibility for these operations," said the statement, adding that Israel's "crimes... will not go unpunished."
According to US monitoring group SITE, Jund al-Khilafah has previously claimed attacks in Afghanistan and Kazakhstan.
Police and prosecutors said earlier they had detained Merah's mother, brother and his brother's girlfriend as part of the inquiry. Sources said Merah had been known to the domestic security service for some years.
Molins confirmed Thursday that Merah had filmed the killings with a camera attached to a chest harness and that officers had viewed the footage.
During the first shooting of a paratrooper on March 11, he can be heard saying "You kill my brothers, now I'm killing you", as he fired two bullets into his victim, Molins said.
During the March 15 attack that killed two other paratroopers in nearby Montauban, he can be seen gunning down the soldiers before driving off on a scooter shouting "Allahu Akbar!" (God is Greatest!), Molins said.
On Monday the gunman, again wearing a motorcycle helmet and riding a scooter, attacked the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school in Toulouse, killing a religious studies teacher, his two toddler sons and a seven-year-old girl.
The siege interrupted the hard-fought campaign for France's April-May presidential vote, but Sarkozy's campaign team said he would be resuming his re-election bid with a rally in the city of Strasbourg on Thursday evening.
Socialist candidate Francois Hollande has been leading in polls to win a second-round runoff on May 6. But after initially trailing, Sarkozy has caught up and they are running neck-and-neck in the April 22 first round vote.
Late Thursday, Hollande said there had been a "failure" that allowed Merah to escape surveillance and he raised questions over the handling of his case. (AFP)
佛 떨게한 테러범, 32시간 총격전 끝에 사살
프랑스 툴루즈 연쇄 총격 사건이 32시간 대치를 벌이던 이슬람 테러리스트인 용의자의 사망으로 막을 내렸다.
10여일간 프랑스를 뒤흔든 이 사건은 한달 앞으로 다가온 프랑스 대선에 이민자 문제와 치안 문제를 쟁점으로 부각시키면서 큰 영향을 줄 것으로 예상된다.
클로드 게앙 내무장관은 22일 이번 사건의 용의자인 모하메드 메라(23)가 툴루즈 자신의 아파트에서 경찰과 총격전을 벌인 끝에 투신해 숨졌다고 밝혔다고 TF1 TV 등 현지 언론이 보도했다.
게앙 장관은 메라가 자신의 아파트에 머물며 32시간 이상 경찰과 대치극을 벌였고 이날 아파트 화장실에 숨어 있다가 체포 작전에 나선 경찰과 격렬한 총격전을 벌 인 뒤 투신했다고 말했다.
게앙 장관은 툴루즈 사건 현장에서 기자들에게 경찰이 이날 작전에서 메라의 아 파트를 샅샅이 수색했다면서 "비디오 장비가 화장실에 삽입되는 순간 살인범이 매우 격렬하게 총격을 가하며 뛰어나왔다"고 당시 상황을 설명했다.
그는 이어 "경찰특공대인 RAID가 응사했으며 모하메드 메라는 결국 사격을 계속 하다가 2층 창문을 통해 뛰어내렸다"면서 "그는 바닥에서 숨진 채 발견됐다"고 말했다.
경찰 관계자는 메라가 창문으로 투신하기 직전 특공대원들이 쏜 총에 맞았다면서 땅에 떨어지는 순간 이미 숨져 있었다고 전하고 지금까지 이렇게까지 거센 저항 은 본 적이 없다고 말했다.
메라의 아파트에 진입하는 과정에서 중상자 1명을 포함해 경찰관 3명이 부상했다.
자신이 알-카에다 소속이며 "프랑스를 굴복시키기 위해" 7명을 사살했다고 밝힌 이슬람 과격주의자인 메라는 알제리계 프랑스인으로, 아프가니스탄은 물론 파키스탄 과격분자들의 거점인 와지리스탄에도 다녀온 것으로 밝혀졌다.
메라는 경찰과의 대화에서 자신이 파키스탄의 와지리스탄에서 알-카에다로부터 훈련받았다고 확인했다.
그는 지난 21일 대치가 시작된 이후 몇시간동안 이뤄진 경찰과의 대화에서 3건의 공격을 통해 랍비 1명과 유대인 어린이 3명, 그리고 3명의 프랑스 공정부대원을 죽였다고 '자랑스럽게' 주장했다.
메라는 당시 경찰과의 대화에서 오후에 투항하겠다고 말했으나 끝내 약속을 지키지 않았다.
사건을 총지휘한 프랑수아 몰랭 검사는 메라가 3건의 연쇄 총격사건을 가슴에 부착한 소형 비디오 카메라를 통해 모두 영상으로 촬영한 것으로 확인됐다고 밝혔다.
한편 니콜라 사르코지 대통령은 이번 사건이 막을 내린 직후 TV 연설을 통해 테 러•증오•폭력을 부추기는 인터넷 사이트에 정기적으로 접속하거나 테러와 관련된 사상을 배우기 위해 해외여행을 하는 사람은 누구를 막론하고 조사해 사법처리하겠다고 밝혔다. (연합뉴스)