On Monday morning in southwest France, a gunman opened fire outside a Jewish school, Ozar Hatorah, killing four people, three of them children, and wounding another, officials reported. Witnesses near the scene reported that the man fled in Toulouse on a motorbike. Michael Valet, the local prosecutor, reported that a father, his two children, and another child were killed in the shooting, and a 17-year-old boy was critically wounded. According to news reports, Valet said, “He shot at everything he could see, children and adults, and some children were chased into the school.”
Police officials reported that last week, in the same region, a man on a motorbike killed three French paratroopers in two separate shootings, using a pistol of the same caliber as one of two weapons used in the Toulouse killings. According to Agence France-Presse, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said, “There are some similarities but it’s much too early to say if there is a real link or not. Only the police and the judiciary will tell us what conclusions to draw.” Sarkozy called the killings a “national tragedy” and police report the killings would be investigated as acts of terrorism. The Minister of the Interior, Claude Gueant, has ordered police, especially in the southwest of France, to intensify security around Jewish schools, a press spokesman reported. France has roughly 300 Jewish schools. Reports show that there has been no clear motive for the attacks and no one has claimed responsibility thus far. The military has ordered soldiers not to wear their uniforms in public.
