TOULOUSE, France (Reuters) – an armed man suspected of killing seven people in the name of Al-Qaeda, including three children in a Jewish school, said on Wednesday handed over to the police to end a siege in the southwest of France.
About 300 police officers heavily armed with helmets and bullet-proof vests cordoned off a residential area around a building of four floors in Toulouse, where the Muslim of 24 years, identified as Mohamed Merah, was entrenched on the ground floor. Two officers were injured in the operation.
The Minister of the Interior, Claude Gueant, said that the man was a French citizen of Algerian origin who had visited several times Afghanistan and Pakistan and indicated that it was acting in revenge for the French military involvement abroad.
The French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, which is presented to the first round of the presidential elections in five weeks, said France should not give in to a desire for revenge or discrimination for the murder of a Rabbi and three children in a school Jewish in Toulouse and three soldiers of North African origin.
Its warning came after the leading ultraderechista Marine Le Pen, a rival in the presidential campaign, said that France should fight a war against Islamic fundamentalism.
, “have brought communities Jewish and Muslim to show that terrorism will not break the sense of community of our nation”, stated.
“We must be United.” “Must not fall nor in discrimination or in revenge,” said Sarkozy.
The Minister of the Interior Gueant said Merah, which was being monitored from the attack on the soldiers last week, wanted revenge “for the deaths of Palestinian children and also wanted to take revenge on the French army for operations abroad”.
Gueant told reporters that Merah was a member of a group of Islamic ideology in France, but that the Organization was not involved in violent plots.
“We are sure that the man surrounded by the police, whose surrender is expected, is that this series of murders committed,” said the Minister to BFM television.
The owner of Interior said Merah had pulled his Colt 45 pistol out of the window of the block of flats in exchange for a “communication device” or mobile phone, but continued armed. Police evacuated the rest of residents at 11: 00 a.m (1000 GMT).
“Said… that will be delivered this afternoon”, said Gueant.
Police sources said that they had carried out a controlled explosion of the car of the suspect to the 9 in the morning after discovering that it was loaded with weapons.
The bride and the brother of Merah, another Islamist known by the authorities, have been arrested, said responsible.
Merah was arrested for making bombs in the Afghan province of Kandahar, in the South of the country, in 2007, but he escaped from prison four months later in a risky flight Taliban, said the director of prisons in Kandahar to Reuters.
Ghulam Faruq said Merah was arrested on December 19, 2007 and sentenced to three years in prison for placing bombs in Kandahar province, birthplace of the Taliban.
/Por Jean Décotte and John Irish /
