3 French police injured in Toulouse shootout
By REUTERS, JPOST.COM STAFF
TOULOUSE, France – A gunman suspected of killing three children and a rabbi at a Jewish school wounded three police officers in a shootout at a house in Toulouse in southwestern France on Wednesday and said he was a member of al-Qaida. Police believe the suspect to be holed up in the building.
French Interior Minister Claude Gueant said the man targeted in the raid was a 24-year-old man who had visited Afghanistan and Pakistan, and had shot dead the four out of revenge for France’s military involvement abroad. He is also suspected by authorities of having killed three soldiers of North African origin last week.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, campaigning for re-election in a presidential poll in five weeks time, has blamed racism for Monday’s school attack. His handling of the crisis could be a decisive factor in determining how the French people vote.
“He claims to be a mujahideen and to belong to al-Qaida,” Gueant told journalists in Toulouse, referring to the gunman.
“He wanted revenge for the Palestinian children and he also wanted to attack the French army because of its foreign intervention.”
France has troops in Afghanistan as part of NATO forces.
Gueant did not say how they had tracked the man down, but that police were talking to his brother at a separate location in connection to the killings.
His mother had also been brought to the scene to help negotiate with the man, who is holed up in a small apartment building in the leafy neighborhood.
Heavily armed police in bullet-proof vests and helmets cordoned off the area where the raid was taking place, in a suburb a few kilometers from the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school where Monday’s shootings took place.
Reuters witnesses heard several shots at about 0440 GMT.
A police source said the police could launch an assault if the standoff lasted for some time. “There are more and more people around, so this creates a dangerous situation.”
Gueant said Sarkozy had been informed of the raid which began at 3:00 a.m. (0200 GMT). When he was the mayor of a upmarket Paris suburb, Sarkozy helped negotiate the end of a hostage crisis involving several children. It has been credited with boosting his political career.
Immigrants and Islam have been major themes of the campaign as Sarkozy tried to win over the voters of far-right leader Marine Le Pen. Analysts say the shootings could transform the election debate and possibly tone down the populist rhetoric.
Jean Marc, a 56-year-old restaurant owner in the city who declined to give his last name, said he believed the crisis would benefit the far right or Sarkozy in the election.
“The Socialists don’t talk about this stuff and it shows they don’t know what they are doing,” he said. “They (the police) need to get this guy.”
Earlier on Wednesday, police sources told Reuters that a man had been arrested at a separate location in connection with the killings.
Authorities believe that the gunman in the school shooting was the same person responsible for killing three soldiers of North African origin in two shootings last week in Toulouse and the nearby town of Montauban.
The same Colt 45 handgun was used in all three attacks and in each case the gunman arrived on a Yamaha scooter with his face hidden by a motorcycle helmet.
Meanwhile Wednesday morning, a French military airplane carrying the bodies of the four victims of the shooting attack landed in Israel.
The victims were set to be buried in Jerusalem at 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday morning.
Youtube Video:
Rabbi and Children’s Burial in Israel: Ozar HaTorah Jewish School Victims Buried in Jerusalem
They still haven’t got him, though he’s holed up for hours without hostages surrounded by the entire French Armed Forces.
Perhaps they want to call in the Israelis for some help?
Or maybe the French want to surrender and help him get to Lebanon?
@ Laura:
muslim Jew-haters are cowards. They not only target children and civilians, they use their own children as shields.
Again how in good conscience can Jewish anti-Israel groups march against Israel in support of the Palestinian causes?
Do they understand who is behind the Palestinian movements?
Do they realize the liberal left media reports lies and accusations levied against the Israelis and do they believe the garbage?
Didn’t they learn from the former poster boy for the PLO, Arafat. I always said he was never interested in any peace with Israel, he was mainly a “terrorist”, “scumbag” and “thief” (he stole the financial aid for the Pals )[beside many other awful things] and he brainwashed the Pals into thinking they were victims of the Israelis. They bought it.
I believe the anti-Israel groups need to rethink their position. Bet the farm they are obama kool-aid drinkers, fools.
The media had initially blamed this atrocity on the “right wing” and even displayed photos of some suspected neo-nazi punks who were in the French military. However, this monstrous act had all the markings of an islamic attack. The worst neo-nazi punks resort to are acts of vandalism against synogogues, Jewish schools and other Jewish targets. They rarely if ever take their hatred this far. But muslim Jew-haters do.
Exactly.
Merah, a French citizen of Algerian origin, was suspected of killing seven people in the name of al Qaeda, including three children at a Jewish school in southwestern France.Kandahar prison chief Ghulam Faruq said that security forces detained Merah on Dec. 19, 2007, and he was sentenced to three years in jail for planting bombs in Kandahar province, the Taliban’s birthplace.
Merah escaped jail along with up to 1,000 prisoners, including 400 Taliban insurgents, during a Taliban attack on southern Afghanistan’s main prison in June 2008.
This is the price of not executing captured Terrorists.
This is the price of Bleeding heart Leftist Ideology.
Israelis take note.