Toulouse shooting: little girl cornered in school and shot in head

“He was calm and determined. In cold blood he assassinated them as if he
was killing animals,” said Nicola Yardeni, the regional president of
CRIF, France’s Jewish organisation, after viewing CCTV footage of the
shootings from surveillance cameras.

“You see a man park his motorcycle, start to shoot, enter the school
grounds and chase children to catch one and shoot a bullet into her head.
It’s unbearable to watch. He was looking to kill.”

Police began a huge manhunt, erecting roadblocks across Toulouse, and put
extra security outside religious schools across France. The attack is being
linked with two other shootings in the Toulouse area in little more than a
week, prompting fears that France is dealing with a racist serial killer.

Last Thursday, three soldiers were shot as they stood by a cash machine in
Montauban, 30 miles north of Toulouse, by a gunman dressed in black and
riding a motor scooter. Two of the victims, aged 26 and 24, died
immediately. They were of north African descent. The third, 28, who is in a
coma in hospital, is from the French overseas region of Guadeloupe.

A witness described how the gunman approached one soldier who was wounded and
attempting to crawl away, turned him over with his foot and fired three more
shots into him before getting back on his scooter and making his escape.

Four days previously in Toulouse a 30-year old soldier from the 1st Parachute
Logistics Regiment was shot dead – again by a gunman on a motor scooter. The
victim was also of north African origin.

One of the weapons used at the school was the same calibre as that used in the
attacks on the soldiers – a .45 calibre automatic pistol.

There were reports in France that police were looking for three former
soldiers of the logistics regiment sacked for “neo-Nazi”
activities. The men were all ejected from the army in 2008 after a
photograph emerged of them making Nazi salutes in front of a swastika. “Police
are interested in locating those men to see if there may be some connection,”
said a source close to the investigation.

The prospect of a serial killer targeting religious and minority groups spread
fear across the nation and is likely to raise questions over controversial
remarks made during the presidential campaign relating to faith and
immigration.

President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is seeking re-election with votes in April and
May, has come under attack by religious leaders and from within his own
party for veering to the Right.

Presidential campaigning was suspended yesterday as Mr Sarkozy visited
Toulouse, followed later by his socialist challenger, François Hollande.

“Our thoughts are with these shattered families, with this mother who at
the same moment lost her children and her husband, with the director of the
school who saw his daughter die before his eyes,” he said. “Barbarism,
savagery, cruelty cannot win. Hate cannot win.”

The president said he was putting the Toulouse region on its highest terrorist
alert level. In a televised address last night, Mr Sarkozy said the same
gunman was responsible for the shootings.

“We know that it is the same person and the same weapon that killed the
soldiers, the children and the teacher,” he said. “This act is
odious and cannot remain unpunished.”

Parents and students gathered at the school throughout the afternoon to
console each other. “I saw two people dead in front of the school, an
adult and a child. Inside, it was a vision of horror – the bodies of two
small children,” said a father whose child attends the school.

Another man who lived near the school said he had spoken with Rabbi Sandler
just before he was killed.

“I said ‘bonjour’ to him like normal,” said the 29 year-old, asking
to be identified only by his first name, Baroukh. “Then he went into
the school entrance. I heard the shots and I turned around and saw him on
the ground. He looked dead. I panicked and started running away.”

The bodies were brought in hearses to the school last night for an evening
vigil. A spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry said it would honour a
request for the burials to take place in Israel.

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