Source says raid began on a house in Toulouse at 3 A.M. local time and is ongoing; French news channel BFM TV says suspects linked to radical Islamist group identified as Forsane Alizza


Suspect in police siege over Toulouse shooting 'wanted revenge for Palestinian children' -French Interior Minister Claude Guéant says suspect claims links to al-Qaida, wanted revenge for French foreign interventions; Police source says raid began on a house in Toulouse at 3 A.M. local time, and is ongoing.

21.03.12

This is a developing story.

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.

The source said the raid began at 3.00 A.M.local time (0200 GMT) and was ongoing, but did not provide further details.

French news channel BFM TV said the suspects were linked to an Islamist group which it identified as Forsane Alizza but it was not immediately possible to confirm this.


"He claims to be a mujahideen and to belong to al-Qaida," Gueant told journalists at the scene of the siege.

The man is also suspected in the killing of three French soldiers in separate attacks in Toulouse and the nearby city of Montauban.

"He wanted revenge for the Palestinian children and he also wanted to take revenge on the French army because of its foreign interventions," Gueant said.

He said that police were also talking to the brother of the suspect who, Gueant said, was 24 years old. Police sources told Reuters that a man had been arrested earlier on Wednesday at a separate location in connection with the killings.

The suspect's mother had also been brought to the scene of the siege in a northern suburb of Toulouse to help with negotiations, Gueant said.

Heavily armed police in bullet-proof vests and helmets cordoned off the residential area where the raid was taking place, in a suburb a few kilometres from the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school where Monday's shootings took place.




Police have described the suspect as a 24-year-old man from an extremist Islamic organization linked to al-Qaida. French news channel BFM TV identified the Islamist group as Forsane Alizza but it was not immediately possible to confirm this.

The suspect, a French citizen of North African descent, is believed to have been trained with al-Qaida on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, according to an Israel's Army Radio report.

French police are currently negotiating with the suspect.








http://edition.cnn.com/2012/03/21/world/europe/france-shooting/index.html?hpt=hp_t1



http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/suspect-in-police-siege-over-toulouse-shooting-wanted-revenge-for-palestinian-children-1.419917


http://edition.cnn.com/video/?hpt=hp_c1#/video/world/2012/03/21/magnay-france-police-raid.cnn