TOULOUSE, France — A 23-year-old Frenchman who claimed responsibility for killing four men and three children was shot dead Thursday after security forces stormed the apartment where he had been holed up for 32 hours, French officials said.
Government officials said they had hoped he would be captured alive. His killing foiled hopes that he might answer crucial questions on the shadowy path of homegrown terrorists and what networks might aid them.
Francois Molins, the prosecutor in charge of the investigation, said the man, Mohamed Merah, was struck in the head by a bullet. Merah was found dead on the ground after leaping from the apartment through a low window, still firing his Colt. 45, according to Interior Minister Claude Gueant.
Just before noon, officers entered the apartment through a front door and windows that had been blasted out, Gueant said. They searched each room using video equipment, arriving finally at the bathroom, Gueant said. As police began to inspect it with the cameras, Merah emerged from a bathroom “firing with extreme violence,” Gueant said.
“At the end, Mohamed Merah jumped out a window with a weapon in his hand, still firing,” he said. “He was found dead on the ground.”
More than 300 rounds reportedly were discharged in the firefight. Three members of the special squad were wounded Thursday, raising the total of injured French officers in the standoff to five.
In a televised address shortly after the operation, President Nicolas Sarkozy praised the work of French security forces and said he would seek changes in the law to criminalize travel abroad by French citizens for training by terror groups. He said anyone who regularly visits “websites that support terrorism or call for hate or violence will be punished by the law.”
He also promised a crackdown on anyone who goes abroad “for the purposes of indoctrination in terrorist ideology.”
The seven slayings, carried out in three motorcycle shooting attacks, are believed to be the first killings inspired by Islamic radical motives in France since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.
The SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors Internet messages, reported Thursday that a lesser-known jihadist group was claiming responsibility for the attacks in France. SITE said Jund al-Khilafah issued a statement saying “Yusuf of France” led an attack Monday, the day of Jewish school shootings. There was no independent confirmation of the claim.
One top French counterterrorism official said on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media that the claim of responsibility could be “opportunistic,” but said authorities were looking into it. Three other Interior Ministry officials declined immediate comment. A former garage mechanic, Merah traveled twice to Afghanistan and Pakistan in recent years and said he had been trained by al-Qaida in South Waziristan. On Thursday, a spokesman for Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry denied that claim.
But a senior commander for the Pakistani Taliban in North Waziristan claimed that many French citizens were at that area to train with al-Qaida. Responding to a message seeking comment, the commander responded: “There have been more than 80 French nationals working in different areas of Waziristan, mainly in North Waziristan’s Mirali and Miranshah. Five of them left from here in January 2012.”
He added, though, that he had no information about a Mohamed Merah or precise names for any of the men, because they adopt new names while training, and then take another when they become operatives.
“Most of them have dual nationalities, and we don’t know to which country they moved from here,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
As with many Taliban claims, his comments could not be verified.
A U.S. counterterrorism official said Merah was on the list of known or suspected terrorists who are prohibited from flying to the U.S. The counterterrorism official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Merah had been on the no-fly list since 2010. The list includes thousands of known or suspected terrorists.
SURROUNDED
Merah’s standoff began shortly after 3 a.m. Wednesday, when he barricaded himself in a five-story apartment complex in the quiet neighborhood of Cote Pavee, after police attempted to arrest him. Hundreds of officers surrounded the building, on a rise not far from the center of the city.
After initially agreeing to surrender, Merah declared he would resist and that it would be either them or him.
“If it’s me, who cares? I’ll go to paradise,” Molins quoted Merah as saying.
In the first six hours of the standoff, the suspect fired several heavy volleys at officers trying to enter his apartment. He tossed a .45-caliber pistol from the window, the same kind used in each of the three attacks he admitted to, and was given some kind of communication device.
He made a series of disclosures, officials said, claiming the killings of three paratroopers last week and an attack on a Jewish school that left a rabbi and three children dead, and saying he had planned more killings to avenge the killings of Palestinian children and to protest French intervention abroad and the banning of the full Islamic veil in France.
Merah had initially indicated to negotiators that he hoped to live, but late Wednesday, after hours of tense quiet, he indicated that “if he was taken, he would kill police officers,” Gueant said. On Thursday, the interior minister said Merah had wished “to die with weapons in his hands.”
A series of explosions and gunshots began before midnight and continued into early Thursday, when French media reported that security forces were attempting to destroy a window at the suspect’s apartment. The idea was to deprive him of sleep and warmth, and add to the pressure on him to surrender.
But at some point, the decision to raid the apartment was made.
FILMED ATTACKS
Merah, lying on the ground below his second-story apartment, was wearing a flak jacket and black djellaba robe. A Colt .45, the type of weapon used in the three attacks, was at his side along with a sack, Molins said.
Merah had made “extremely explicit films” of all three deadly attacks, video since viewed by police, and claimed to have posted them online, the prosecutor said. Merah told investigators where to find the bag with the videos, caught by a camera that had been strapped to his chest and given to someone else to keep.
In the film of the March 11 attack that killed a paratrooper, the prosecutor said, the gunman is heard saying: “You kill my brothers — I kill you.”
In his film of the second attack, on March 15 that killed two paratroopers and wounded a third in nearby Montauban, Merah cried out “Allahu Akbar!” or “God is great” in Arabic, the prosecutor said.
Authorities spoke little about the video of the third attack at a Jewish school in Toulouse. A witness to another video of that rampage, from a school camera, said it was chilling and had described him shooting young children in the head.
A stash of arms was found in a car rented by Merah, including an automatic Sten pistol, a revolver, a pump-action rifle and an Uzi submachine gun. Ingredients for Molotov cocktails were stashed on the apartment balcony. Inside, were three empty ammunition clips, a pot packed with ammunition and a Colt .45 with a near-empty clip.
Merah had told investigators where to find the car.
More than 200 special investigators had worked to track him down. They found his mother’s computer, which he used to respond to an online ad posted by the first victim, a paratrooper trying to sell his scooter. They also found a Yamaha motorcycle shop where Merah suspiciously sought information about how to deactivate a GPS tracker.
Information for this article was contributed by Scott Sayare, Steven Erlanger, Richard Berry, Maia de la Baume, Sophie Cohen, Isabel Kershner of The New York Times; and by Sarah DiLorenzo, Johanna Decorse, Angela Charlton, Jamey Keaten and Elaine Ganley of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 03/23/2012