Gunman came out of bathroom, firing with extreme violence

An al-Qaida-inspired gunman who killed seven people, including three children and a teacher at the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school earlier this week, is dead after police stormed his apartment in the southern city of Toulouse, France's interior minister confirmed on Thursday.

Mohammed Merah, a 23-year-old Frenchman of Algerian origin, had been silent for hours but opened fire on special forces who stormed the building and was killed in the ensuing gunbattle.

Police entered the five-storey building mid-morning following a standoff of around 30 hours.

“At the moment when a video probe was sent into the bathroom, the killer came out of the bathroom, firing with extreme violence,” Interior Minister Claude Gueant told reporters at the scene, adding that Merah was firing several guns at once. Gueant said that the special anti-terror police unit that was involved in the raid did not know where in the house Merah was located, nor whether he was alive or dead.

“In the end, Mohamed Merah jumped from the window with his gun in his hand, continuing to fire. He was found dead on the ground,” he said.

At a press conference after the raid, Gueant said the anti-terror unit "had never seen a suspect react with such violence and intensity before," and had to protect themselves.

Two police commandos were injured in the operation, one with a shot to the foot, the other is being treated for shock.

Earlier Thursday, Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Army Radio on Thursday that France’s security forces would have to investigate the fact that they were not able to prevent Merah from carrying out the murders, though they were aware of his activities.

“I can see that after the attack, and it’s a shame they didn’t succeed earlier, the French are engaging in this with full force and with all their resources,” Barak told Army Radio. “There is full cooperation between us,” he added, “but they don’t need our advice.”

“The event itself is very grave,” Barak went on to say. “This was a cruel and painful attack that cannot be allowed to happen again.”

Overnight Wednesday and into Thursday morning, elite police squads set off sporadic blasts — some that blew off the shutters of the apartment where Merah was holed up - in what officials described as a tactic aimed to pressure him to surrender.

Two or three gunshots were heard from the area of the apartment building overnight. The interior minister said the source of the gunshots was unclear.

Police said, in hours of negotiations Wednesday when the standoff first began, Merah admitted to being proud of killing a rabbi, three Jewish children and three French paratroopers in three separate motorcycle shooting attacks. They are believed to be the first killings inspired by Islamic radical motives in France in more than a decade.

Holed up alone in an otherwise evacuated apartment building, Merah clung to his few remaining assets - a small arsenal and the authorities’ hopes of taking him alive. He appeared to toy with police negotiators — first saying he would surrender in the afternoon, then under the cover of darkness, then reneging on those pledges altogether, officials said.

French authorities said that Merah had been to Afghanistan and Pakistan, where he claimed to have received training from al-Qaida.

They said he told negotiators he had killed a rabbi and three young children at a Jewish school on Monday and three French paratroopers last week to avenge the deaths of Palestinian children and to protest the French army’s involvement in Afghanistan, as well as a government ban last year on face-covering Islamic veils.

“He has no regrets, except not having more time to kill more people and he boasts that he has brought France to its knees,” prosecutor Francois Molins told a news conference Wednesday.

French authorities — like others across Europe — have long been concerned about “lone-wolf” attacks by young, Internet-savvy terrorists who find radical beliefs online since they are harder to find and track.

Merah espoused a radical brand of Islam and had been to the Afghanistan-Pakistan region twice and to the Pakistani militant stronghold of Waziristan for training, Molins said.

He said the suspect had plans to kill another soldier — prompting the police raid.

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