TOULOUSE, France: A gunman suspected of killing seven people in the name of al Qaeda, including three children at a Jewish school, said on Wednesday he would hand himself over to police to end an hours-long siege in southwestern France.
About 300 police, some in bullet-proof body armour, cordoned off an area surrounding a four-storey house in a leafy suburb of the city of Toulouse where the 24-year-old Muslim man, identified as Mohamed Merah, was holed up on the ground floor.
Interior Minister Claude Gueant said the gunman was a French citizen of Algerian origin who had been to Pakistan and Afghanistan and had carried out his killings in revenge for French military involvement abroad.
President Nicolas Sarkozy, running for re-election in five weeks time, said France should not give way to discrimination or vengeance after the shootings of a rabbi and the three children, and three soldiers of North African oriGin.
His warning came after far-right leader Marine Le Pen, a rival presidential candidate, said France should wage war on Islamic fundamentalism.
‘I have brought the Jewish and Muslim communities together to show that terrorism will not manage to break our nation’s feeling of community,’ Sarkozy said after meeting community leaders. ‘We must stand together. We must not cede to discrimination or vengeance.’
Interior Minister Gueant said Merah, who had been under surveillance since the attack on the first of the soldiers last week, wanted revenge ‘for the Palestinian children and he also wanted to attack the French army because of its foreign intervention’.
He told journalists Merah was a member of an ideological Islamic group in France but this organisation was not involved in plotting any violence.
‘We are certain that the man surrounded by police, and whose surrender is expected, is the one who committed this series of killings,’ G u eant told BFM television.
He said Merah had thrown a Colt 45 pistol out of a window of the block of flats in exchange for a ‘communication device’ or mobile phone, but was still armed. Police evacuated the other residents at 11:00 a.m (1530 IST).
‘He said … he will turn himself in this afternoon.’
Police sources said they had conducted a controlled explosion of the suspect’s car at around 9:00 a.m. after discovering it was loaded with weapons.
Merah’s girlfriend and brother, who was also known to authorities as a radical Islamist, have also been arrested, officials said. (PTI)