Suspect in French killings dead after 31 hour siege, minister says

The suspect in the fatal shootings of three children and four others in and around the southern French city of Toulouse has been reported dead after a 31 hour police siege of his apartment, French Interior Minister Claude Gueant said on Thursday. Mohammed Merah, 24, was wanted for the murder of three French paratroopers, and three children and a rabbi at a Jewish school in Toulouse. The spree of killings began on March 11. On Wednesday, Gueant reported that the French authorities wanted the 24-year-old alive. “We hope that he is still alive. We have a priority to hand him over to the authorities,” the minister said.

At every hour through the night, French police fired stun grenades at the building, but there was no response. Around 11:30 a.m. (6:30 a.m. EST), the police launched a raid of gunfire and Gueant announced the suspect’s death soon after. Merah reportedly wanted to die with weapons in his hands. Paris prosecutor Francois Molins reported Merah told French police that he trained with al-Qaeda in Pakistan’s Waziristan region, bordering Afghanistan, and that he planned to attack more soldiers and police on Wednesday. Merah also said that he was acting alone and told Ebba Kalondo, the senior news editor of the television network France 24, that neither capture nor death scared him at all. On Wednesday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy called on his French nation “to unite together to show that terrorism will not be able to fracture our national community.”