Mohammed Merah, the gunman in the Toulouse Jewish school shootings, has been killed in a police raid on his apartment on Thursday morning. Three policemen were wounded in an exchange of fire that lasted several minutes. Merah, staged a dramatic last stand as he burst out of a bathroom and fired wildly at officers, before jumping out of a window while still shooting. The gunman, who reportedly told negotiators he wanted to "die with weapons in his hands", was found dead on the ground, French Interior Minister Claude Guéant said shortly after the end of the operation. The special police unit RAID had entered Merah's apartment after a siege that lasted 32 hours.
Merah claimed to be a member of the Islamist terror network al-Qaeda and told police that he had wanted to avenge Palestinian children killed by Israel. The RAID had surrounded his apartment since 3 a.m. on Wednesday morning.
Merah's brother had been arrested, Interior Minister Claude Guéant told journalists. Mohammed Merah was known to authorities for having spent time in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He allegedly killed a paratrooper in Toulouse on 11 March, and later two other paratroopers were shot dead and one injured in the nearby town of Montauban. On Monday morning, three Jewish children and a rabbi were murdered at Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse.
Muslim leader warns of blaming all French Muslims for killings
Dalil Boubakeur (pictured below, left, with French Jewish leaders), the rector of Paris' Grand Mosque, urged France not to stigmatize its Muslim citizens. Boubakeur said "99.9 percent" of Muslims in France are law-abiding citizens and that the killings of three soldiers, three Jewish children and a rabbi in the Toulouse region were the work of a tiny "fringe".
"I am completely surprised that the author of these misdeeds be from a fundamentalist, jihadist, terrorist-type movement of the kind we thought was controlled, neutralized and harmless in our country," Boubakeur was quoted by the AFP news agency as saying. On Tuesday, he was part of a group of Jewish and Muslim leaders, including World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder, which was received by President Nicolas Sarkozy at the Elysée Palace on Tuesday. Boubakeur said he and other religious leaders had been invited to meet with French President Nicolas Sarkozy again later on Wednesday to discuss community relations in the wake of the attacks.
Meanwhile, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said extremists must stop using the Palestinian cause to justify their acts of violence. "It is time for these criminals to stop marketing their terrorist acts in the name of Palestine and to stop pretending to stand up for the rights of Palestinian children who only ask for a decent life," Fayyad said.
Victims buried in Israel
Meanwhile, the four Jewish victims from Monday's shooting attack in Toulouse were buried in Israel. The funeral drew hundreds of mourners, supporters and family members. After a brief religious ceremony on the tarmac of Ben Gurion Airport, the bodies of Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, 30, his sons Arieh, 6, and Gabriel, 3, and another student at the Toulouse school, Miriam Monsonego, 8, were taken to a cemetery on the western slopes of Jerusalem.
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, who accompanied the coffins, was greeted by Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon. Reacting to reports that the suspect may be an Islamic extremist linked to al-Qaeda, Ayalon condemned the "deep hatred by fanatic Islamists ... not only against Jews but against anyone different from them."
The three children hold dual French-Israeli citizenship. Rabbi Sandler, a French national, was born in France and moved back and forth to Israel as a religious teacher. His wife is Israeli, according to Israel’s Foreign Ministry. The Israeli government paid for the funeral. "Because Israeli citizens were killed in a terror attack, the government decided to pay for the repatriation of the bodies and burial," said Foreign Minister spokesman Yigal Palmor.
