French police shot dead Thursday a self-declared Al-Qaeda militant wanted for a series of killings of soldiers and Jews, ending a tense 32-hour siege in the south of France.The seven killings shocked France, home to western Europe's largest Jewish and Muslim minorities, and raised questions about intolerance and security failures in the midst of a hard-fought presidential election campaign.Mohamed Merah, who admitted shooting dead three soldiers and three children and a teacher at a Jewish school, also tried to shoot his way out of the siege in Toulouse after police from the elite RAID force entered his flat.Police said the 23-year-old burst out of the bathroom, opening fire on officers before jumping out the window of his first-floor apartment, still firing as he fell, in a desperate bid to escape.
"He was killed by RAID shooters while trying to escape," a police source told AFP. "He was dead by the time he hit the ground." Interior Minister Claude Gueant said Merah was "shooting very violently" when he emerged from the bathroom.
"A RAID officer who is used to this kind of thing told me that he had never seen such a violent assault," Gueant said.
"RAID officers of course tried to protect themselves, to return fire, and then in the end, Mohamed Merah jumped out of the window with a gun in his hand, continuing to fire. He was found dead on the ground," he said. Around 300 bullets were fired during the shootout, police sources said. Merah, who told authorities he had been trained by Al-Qaeda on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, had previously fought off repeated attempts to storm his apartment after he was tracked down early Wednesday.
President Nicolas Sarkozy vowed after the end of the siege to crack down on extremism, saying he wanted legal action against people who regularly consult jihadist websites or travel abroad for indoctrination.France's chief anti-terror prosecutor, Francois Molins, had earlier described Merah as a cold-blooded killer with no remorse. "He expressed no regret apart from not having had enough time to kill more victims," Molins told reporters on Wednesday.On Thursday, the prosecutor confirmed that Merah had filmed all of the killings with a camera attached to a chest harness, and that officers had viewed the footage and confirmed it recorded the crimes. Molins said Merah had taken responsibility for the shootings, claiming to be avenging Palestinian deaths and opposing the French military's involvement in Afghanistan and France's ban on full-face veils.
On Wednesday, the Jewish victims of the attacks were buried in Jerusalem and two of the soldiers were laid to rest, one in France and one in Morocco.