French police seem to be in a standoff with the killer in the attacks on the French paratroopers and the attack on the Jewish school.
It turns out I was correct as to who was responsible.
To the surprise of the media that initially tried to claim the attack as being performed by some neo-Nazi individual, the attacker is instead going by the name of Mohammed and is claiming to be a member of Al Qaeda.
The Detroit Free Press: France shooting suspect holed up in building
TOULOUSE, France — A predawn police raid on a home in Toulouse erupted into a firefight Wednesday with a gunman who claims connections to al-Qaida and is suspected of killing three Jewish schoolchildren, a rabbi and three paratroopers.
The man has thrown his handgun out a window but has other weapons on him, including an AK-47 assault rifle, and has used them in volleys with police surrounding the building in this southwestern city, French Interior Minister Claude Gueant said.
Three policemen have been wounded in the operation, which is still ongoing, Gueant said. The suspect's brother has been arrested.
Gueant said the suspect is talking to a police negotiator and says he'll surrender in the afternoon. The minister says police want to take him alive.
The suspect is 24 years old, of French nationality and says "he belongs to al-Qaida," Gueant told reporters. He said the suspect "wants to take revenge for Palestinian children" killed in the Middle East, and is angry at the French military for its operations abroad.
The man was known to authorities for having spent time in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The shooting suspect is "talking a lot, claiming his jihadist convictions" and calling himself a "mujahedeen," Gueant said.
So much for him being a neo-Nazi as the media originally tried to spin the attacks, as seen in this Google search.
Interestingly enough, clicking on those links show the headlines and articles claiming the shooter to be a neo-Nazi have disappeared, being replaced with the news stories that the fellow goes by the name of Mohammed Merah without any correction of their original supposition.
Of course, the goals of neo-Nazis and Al Qaeda are pretty similar and their predecessors got along quite well in the past as allies, but it is interesting to watch the media do all they can from mentioning the "I"-word in the immediate aftermath of a terrorist attack.
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