TOULOUSE, France — Riot police set off explosions outside an apartment building early today in an effort to force the surrender of a gunman who boasted of bringing France “to its knees” with an al-Qaida-linked terror rampage that killed seven people.
Hundreds of heavily armed police, some in body armor, surrounded the five-story building in Toulouse where the 24-year-old suspect, Mohamed Merah, had been holed up since the pre-dawn hours Wednesday.
Several explosions and gunshots could be heard just before 2 a.m. French time, a few hours after three explosions rattled the area. An Interior Ministry official said the suspect had reneged on a previous pledge to turn himself in - and that police blew up the shutters outside the apartment window to pressure him to surrender.
Sporadic blasts and bursts of gunfire rang out throughout the night, though officials insisted no full-on assault was under way. “It’s not as simple as that. We are waiting,” the Toulouse prosecutor, Michel Valet, said.
Authorities said the gunman, a French citizen of Algerian descent, had been to Afghanistan and Pakistan, where he claimed to have received training from al-Qaida.
They said he told negotiators he killed a rabbi and three young children at a Jewish school Monday and three French paratroopers last week to avenge the deaths of Palestinian children and to protest the French army’s involvement in Afghanistan, as well as a government ban last year on face-covering Islamic veils.
“He has no regrets, except not having more time to kill more people, and he boasts that he has brought France to its knees,” Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said at a news conference.
Merah espoused a radical brand of Islam and had been to the Afghanistan-Pakistan region twice and to the Pakistani militant stronghold of Waziristan for training, Molins said.
He said the suspect had plans to kill another soldier, prompting the police raid.
The standoff began after a police attempt about 3 a.m. Wednesday to detain Merah broke into a firefight. Two police officers were wounded, triggering on-and-off negotiations with the suspect that lasted into the night.
As darkness fell, police cut electricity and gas to the building, then quietly closed in to wait out the suspect.
Authorities were “counting on his great fatigue and weakening,” said Didier Martinez of the SGP police union, adding the siege could go on for hours. Street lights were also cut, making Merah more visible to officers with night-vision goggles in case of an assault.
The gunman’s brother and mother were detained early Wednesday. Molins said the 29-year-old brother, Abdelkader, had been implicated in a 2007 network that sent militant fighters to Iraq, but was never charged.
The siege was part of France’s biggest manhunt since a wave of terrorist attacks in the 1990s by Algerian extremists. The chase began after France’s worst-ever school shooting Monday and two previous attacks on paratroopers beginning March 11.
“Terrorism will not be able to fracture our national community,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy declared Wednesday on national television before heading to funeral services for the two paratroopers killed last week in Montauban, near Toulouse. Athird paratrooper was injured in the attack.
The suspect repeatedly promised to turn himself in, then halted negotiations. Cedric Delage, regional secretary for a police union, said police were prepared to storm the building if he did not surrender.
Sarkozy’s office said President Barack Obama called him Wednesday to express condolences to the families of the victims and praise French police for tracking down the suspect. The statement said France and the United States are “more determined than ever to fight terrorist barbarity together.”
In recent years, French counter terrorism officials have focused mainly on al-Qaidain-the-Islamic-Maghreb, the North African affiliate of the terrorist network that has its roots in an insurgent group in Algeria, a former French colony.
Molins said Merah’s first trip to Afghanistan ended with him being picked up by Afghan police “who turned him over to the American Army who put him on the first plane to France.”
He said Merah bragged to authorities that he planned more attacks inside France.
“He had foreseen other killings, notably he foresaw another attack this morning, targeting a soldier,” Molins said, adding Merah also planned to attack two police officers. “He claims to have always acted alone.”
Merah has a long record as a juvenile delinquent with 15 convictions, Molins added.
Those slain at the Jewish school, all of French-Israeli nationality, were buried in Israel on Wednesday. The bodies of Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, his sons Arieh, 5, and Gabriel, 3, and 8-year-old Myriam Monsenego had been flown there earlier in the day.
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad denounced the deadly shooting attack at the Jewish school and condemned the link to Palestinian children.
“It’s time for criminals to stop using the Palestinian cause to justify their terrorist actions,” Fayyad said in a statement.
Information for this article was contributed from Paris by Elaine Ganley, Thomas Adamson, Jamey Keaten, Ingrid Rousseau, Cecile Brisson and Sylvie Corbet; from Berlin by David Rising; from Jerusalem by Daniella Cheslow; and from Washington by Eileen Sullivan of The Associated Press; and by Scott Sayare, Steven Erlanger, Maia de la Baume, Sophie Cohen and Isabel Kershner of The New York Times.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 03/22/2012