Toulouse Shooting: Terror Suspect Dies During Police Raid
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French shooting suspect Mohamed Merah
The suspect, Mohamed Merah, 23, was holed up in the apartment’s bathroom when he exchanged fire with police, according to Claude Gueant, France’s interior minister.
Fox News has more:
“The killer came out of the bathroom, firing with extreme violence," Claude Gueant, the interior minister, said, adding that the RAID squad had "never seen an assault like it."
"Mohamed Merah jumped out the window, gun in hand, continuing to fire. He was found dead on the ground," Gueant said.
Gueant earlier had said police wanted to capture Merah alive.
"Lone wolves are formidable adversaries," said Gueant.
The standoff between Merah and police lasted more than 32 hours. A French citizen of Algerian heritage, Merah claimed he had received training from Al Qaeda while in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He told negotiators that he killed four Jewish individuals, among them three young children, to avenge deaths of Palestinian children. He also said he killed three French paratroopers last week to protest France's involvement in Afghanistan and the government's ban on Islamic veils that cover the face.
According to the New York Post:
During one of two trips to Afghanistan, Mohammed Merah was detained at a roadblock by Afghan cops and turned over to US soldiers, according to Francois Molins, a French prosecutor. Soon afterward, the United States washed its hands of him and “put him on the first plane headed to France,’’ Molins said.
Once in France, he was allowed to live freely in Toulouse, despite his known radical views
Merah is suspected of killing four people outside of the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school in Toulouse, France on Monday. Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, 30, and his two young sons, Gabriel, 3, and Aryeh, 6, were gunned down. Another victim, 7-year-old Myriam Monsonego, the daughter of the school's principal, Rabbi Yaacov Monsonego, died in her father's arms after being shot execution-style.
Just four days prior to the shooting outside the Jewish school, two French soldiers of North African descent were shot dead in Montauban—a town about 28 miles north of Toulouse. The soldiers were Corporal Abel Chennouf, 25, and Private First Class Mohammed Legouade, 23—both from the 17th Parachute Engineering Regiment. In an earlier attack, the suspect gunned down another French soldier, Paratrooper Imad Ibn Ziaten, in Toulouse. Ibn Ziaten is also of North African origin.
The targeted killings of the soldiers are thought to be vengeance for their military service in France. Arab or Muslim troops in Western armies are considered targets for Islamic terrorists as they are considered to be traitors.
According to the New York Post, Merah’s brother, Abdelkader, was implicated in a 2007 conspiracy to send Islamic militants to Iraq to fight American troops. Authorities have detained the suspected shooter’s brother along with their mother.
