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France shootings siege: Live Report

21 marca, 2012

0913 GMT The France 24 journalist who received the claim for the attacks during the night tells AFP journalist Nicolas Gaudichet that the man gave her details of the murder, including the number of shots fired and type of weapon used. \"He said he was affiliated with Al-Qaida and that it was only the beginning...that everything was filmed... and that it would be on the web shortly\".

0857 GMT The explosion heard earlier near the building where the suspect is holed up came from the destruction of a vehicle which was blocking police efforts, a source close to the investigation says.

0850 GMT The besieged suspect has declared he will surrender later today, Interior Minister Claude Gueant says.

"He is currently in a dialogue with a police official and he says, I do not know if he is telling the truth, that he he will hand himself in later in the day," the minister tells BFM-TV news network.

0843 GMT Back in France, police have named the suspected gunman as Mohammed Merah, 24, of Algerian origin.

0840 GMT Meanwhile in Jerusalem funerals are under way for the three French-Israeli children and a teacher who were gunned down in the Jewish school shooting, AFP correspondent Selim Saheb Ettaba reports from Israel.

At least 2,000 mourners were gathered at the Givat Shaul cemetery as the four bodies were carried to the gravesite. Among them is French Foreign Minister Alain JuppĂ© as well as family and friends of the deceased.

0835 GMT French Interior Minister Claude Gueant says police want to catch the suspect alive. He tells BFM television: "Our main concern is to catch him and to catch him under such conditions that he can be brought to justice."

0830 GMT A loud blast was heard earlier near the besieged building, an AFP journalist reports.

0815 GMT French police have surrounded a house in Toulouse where a man suspected of a series of deadly shootings is holed up. In this live report AFP will be following the operation as it unfolds.

So far two officers have been wounded after shots were fired at the property under siege in a residential area of the city.

The suspect is a French national of North African origin who has declared himself a member of the Al-Qaeda network, officials said.

In the latest development, police said the suspect had been previously arrested in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar. A source close to the investigation told AFP that the 24-year-old had once been arrested on a matter of common law in the country.

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