Gunman kills four at French Jewish school
TOULOUSE (AFP) – France imposed an unprecedented terror alert in the southwest as police yesterday sought a suspected serial killer who gunned down three children and a teacher at a Jewish school in Toulouse.
With the country in shock, French President Nicolas Sarkozy suspended his re-election campaign until at least today, as police probed the third fatal shooting in the Toulouse area in eight days by a gunman using the same pistol and a stolen scooter.
Distraught and angry parents converged on the scene shortly after the shooting as frightened children were brought out in small groups.
“I came to the school this morning for prayers,” said six-year-old Alexia. “Five minutes later we heard shots, and we were very afraid. We gathered in a room and prayed together while we waited for our parents.”
The gunman initially used a nine-millimeter weapon but it jammed prompting him to switch to a .45-caliber gun as he stormed the school, police said. French authorities stepped up security at Jewish and Muslim schools following the bloody assault on the Ozar Hatorah school, and Sarkozy said the terror alert in the Midi-pyrenees region had been raised to “scarlet,” its highest level, following Monday’s shootings.
“In attacking children and a Jewish teacher, the anti-semitic motive of the attack appears to be obvious,” Sarkozy said in a nationally televised address after he returned to Paris from the scene of the shooting.
Israel led global outrage against the
“despicable murders” and identified the dead as FrancoIsraeli citizens: 30- year- old Rabbi Jonathan Sandler and his sons Arieh, 5, and Gabriel, 4, as well as seven-year-old girl Miriam Monsonego.
Witnesses said Sandler died trying to shield his sons, and that the gunman had chased Miriam, the daughter of the school head, into the school before shooting her in the head.
Yaacov Monsonego was praying in the synagogue attached to the school when another young pupil brought him the body of his slain daughter, witnesses said.
A fifth victim, a 17-year-old boy, was wounded, but local community leaders said he was expected to survive.
The killer wore a full face helmet and appeared calm and collected, carefully parking his scooter before opening fire, witnesses said. Last week, three French paratroopers – all of North African descent – were killed in two similar incidents in the same southwestern region in which the attacker rode a scooter and wielded the same .45 caliber handgun.
“What is sure is that he has now acted three times, and we are concerned by the attitude of impunity that he has demonstrated,” Interior Minister Claude Gueant said, admitting that police have “no clear leads.”
“This tragedy has left the entire national community distraught,” Sarkozy declared at the scene, his voice cracking as he sent condolences to the Jewish community and the Rabbi’s wife who lost her husband and two children.
He said a moment of silence would be observed today in all French schools, adding that security would be stepped up around religious establishments in the region and police reinforcements deployed to hunt down the gunman.
Electioneering was effectively suspended but both the right-wing incumbent and his Socialist rival Francois Hollande rushed to Toulouse to pay their respects.
“We cannot back down in the face of terror,” Sarkozy said. “Barbarism, savagery, cruelty cannot win. Hate cannot win. The Republic is too strong for that, much too strong.”
France’s press said the tragedy had brought a measure of unity to France during a period of political division ahead of next month’s presidential election.
“In the space of a few hours the unity of the nation supplants the partisan rants and the bad- natured arguments among the presidential hopefuls,” the regional Midi Libre daily said.