French gunman planned to kill soldier, policemen

A gunman suspected of killing seven people in southwest France in the name of al Qaeda had planned to kill another soldier and two police officials before he was surrounded by police in an early morning raid on Wednesday, an investigator said.    

Paris Prosecutor Francois Molins said the besieged gunman, Mohamed Merah, had told police negotiators that he had received training from al Qaeda in Afghanistan.    

Merah has also claimed responsibility for the killings of three soldiers of North African origin last week and four people at a Jewish school in Toulouse on Monday, Molins said.

French Interior Minister Claude Gueant had denied earlier that a gunman suspected of killing seven people in the name of al Qaeda has been arrested, a ministry spokesman said. "Claude Gueant denies the arrest of the main suspect," interior ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet told Reuters.    

French television channels BFM TV and i-Tele had reported that the suspected killer had been arrested after a nearly 12-hour operation. The suspect remains holed up in an apartment in Toulouse, surrounded by police.  French President Nicolas Sarkozy earlier said  that France should not give in to a desire for revenge or discrimination over the killings of a rabbi and three children at a Jewish school in Toulouse. "We must be united. We must give in neither to discrimination nor revenge," Sarkozy told reporters in a brief statement at the Elysee presidential palace.    

"I have brought together the Jewish and Muslim communities to show that terrorism will not manage to break our nation's feeling of community," he added. It was earlier reported that a gunman under siege by French police in Toulouse, suspected of killing four people at a Jewish school this week, has told negotiators he will give himself up later today, Interior Minister Claude Gueant said.   

"He said ... he will turn himself in this afternoon," Gueant told BFM television, adding that authorities were determined to take the suspect alive so he could stand trial. The gunman, a 24-year-old Frenchman claiming to belong to al Qaeda, threw a pistol from the window of the house in exchange for a "communication device", Gueant said. He still has an Uzi machine gun, a Kalashnikov assault rifle and other weapons, he said.   

The man, who is also the prime suspect in the killing of three soldiers last week, told negotiators he acted to punish France's army for its foreign interventions and the plight of Palestinian children.

Two French police officers were injured in a shoot-out during a raid on a house in Toulouse on Wednesday to arrest suspects in the killings of three children and a rabbi at a Jewish school in southwest France this week, a police source said.

Reuters