School shooting suspect 'planned to kill' again
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Left: A police officer stands next to the building in Toulouse, France, on Wednesday, where a suspect in the shooting at the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school has been spotted. Right: Volunteers carry one of the coffins bearing a slain victim into a van from the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school two days after the shooting in Toulouse after it was unloaded from an airplane in Ben Gurion International Airport in Lod near Tel Aviv on Wednesday. |
French President Nicolas Sarkozy told religious community representatives the suspected Islamist gunman besieged in Toulouse had planned another attack on Wednesday, a Jewish leader said.
A police source also said the suspect, who has been identified as self-declared Islamist Mohamed Merah, planned to kill another soldier.
Nicole Yardeni, head of the CRIF Jewish group in the Midi-Pyrenees region, said Sarkozy had told them the shooter "already had a plan to kill again" and that "he planned to kill this morning".
The police source said the suspect had "told investigators this morning that he had decided to kill a soldier in Toulouse on Wednesday morning and had already identified the victim."
Sarkozy met with the Jewish representatives in a police station near where police were besieging the home of a 23-year-old suspected Islamist militant believed to be behind the killings of three soldiers last week and three children and a teacher at a Jewish school on Monday.
Sarkozy left the station without making any comments after the meeting and later arrived at a military barracks in nearby Montauban for a ceremony in honor of the three dead soldiers.
Authorities in Afghanistan confirmed that Merah had been arrested for bomb making in the lawless southern province of Kandahar in 2007 but escaped months later in a massive Taliban prison break.
Police removed other residents from the building and began evacuating other nearby homes. A police source had said earlier that authorities would not allow the siege to drag on indefinitely.
Sarkozy said that the terrorist act would not succeed in dividing France after meeting with French Jewish and Muslim representatives at Elysee Palace.
"The terrorism will not be able to fracture our national community," Sarkozy said, affirming that France should not be tempted by revenge and the police raid would make every effort to ensure Merah is held accountable for the crimes he has committed.
The president, on behalf of the nation, pay tribute to the country's law enforcement forces for their mobilization of tracking down the assailant.
Interior Minister Gueant told journalists Merah was a member of an ideological Islamic group in France.
Reuters-Xinhua-AFP
