Toulouse killings suspect dead after police storm apartment

MOHAMED MERAH

A young French man suspected of killing seven people in the name of Al Qaeda is dead after police stormed his apartment in the southern city of Toulouse.

“Mohamed Merah jumped through the window with a weapons, still shooting, and was found dead on the ground,” French Interior Minister Claude Gueant said Thursday.

Shortly before noon, French special forces had stormed the apartment building, after using “video techniques to inspect the rooms,” Gueant said.

Merah, 23, was holed up in his apartment bathroom and “came out shooting violently. The shots were frequent and severe,” Gueant said. Police said they had “never seen such ferocity,” he added.

Two police commandos were wounded, the minister said. One officer was shot in the leg.

Authorities said Merah, a French citizen of Algerian descent, espoused a radical form of Islam and had been to Afghanistan and the Pakistani militant stronghold of Waziristan, where he claimed to have received training from Al Qaeda.

They said he told negotiators he 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.

Police had detonated explosives Wednesday night to take out the windows of the five-storey building where Merah had been hiding out since early on Wednesday, Gueant said.

Claude Gueant said suspect Mohamed Merah, holed up in an apartment in the southern city of Toulouse, has not contacted negotiators since Wednesday night.


Elite police squads set off sporadic blasts throughout the night and into the morning — some blew off the apartment’s shutters — in what officials described as a tactic aimed to pressure 24-year-old Merah to give up.

Gueant said “it’s rather strange that he never reacted” to the detonations overnight.

Police were using their advantages — numbers, firepower and psychological pressure — in hopes of wearing down Merah, who has had no water, electricity, gas or most likely sleep since the early hours of Wednesday.

Holed up alone in an otherwise evacuated apartment building, Merah clung to his few remaining assets, like a small arsenal and 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 — like others across Europe — have long been concerned about “lone-wolf” attacks by young, Internet-savvy militants who find radical beliefs online, since they are harder to find and track.

“Lone wolves are formidable adversaries,” Gueant said.

The suspect had plans to kill another soldier — prompting the police raid at around 3 a.m. Wednesday. After it erupted into a firefight, wounding two police, a standoff ensued, with on-and-off negotiations with the suspect that lasted through the night.

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