French police raid house for suspects in Jewish school attack; officers injured
UPDATED 1:40 a.m. ET: TOULOUSE, France -- Two French police officers were injured in a shootout during a raid on a house to arrest suspects in the killings of three children and a rabbi at a Jewish school in southwest France this week, local media reported on Wednesday.
NBC News reported that the raid is still ongoing at a house in North Toulouse, located approximately 2 miles from the Jewish school.
An elite police team known as RAID were targeting two brothers suspected of being Islamic fundamentalists, NBC News reported. Shots were heard from heavy weaponry.
One of the suspects has apparently claimed to be linked to al-Qaida, Interior Minister Claude Gueant said.
"He claims to be a mujahideen and to belong to al-Qaida,'' Gueant told journalists at the scene of the siege.
He is currently bunkered in the house and defending himself. Negotiations with the man have reportedly failed.
"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.
The suspect said that he trained in the Pakistan and Afghanistan and is affiliated with Forca lesa, an Islamic group dismantled by the French government. The group, which recruits young French to join the jihad, is considered very dangerous.
On Tuesday, Police spread out across southern France by the hundreds in the hunt for an expert gunman suspected in three deadly attacks. Authorities suspect the school killer was also behind two recent attacks in the same area on French paratroopers that left three soldiers dead and one seriously wounded. The victims were of North African and French Caribbean backgrounds.
Police were also talking to the brother of the man 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
All French shooting victims shot in the head at close range, prosecutor says
A "monster" is on the loose in France, French President Nicolas Sarkozy declared, vowing to track him down.
A "monster" is on the loose in France, French President Nicolas Sarkozy declared, vowing to track him down.
"There are beings who have no respect for life. When you grab a little girl to put a bullet in her head, without leaving her any chance, you are a monster. An anti-Semitic monster, but first of all a monster," he said.
France was reeling Tuesday after Monday's shooting, the deadliest school shooting in the country and the bloodiest attack on Jewish targets in decades. Schools across the country held a moment of silence Tuesday to honor the victims, who were heading to Israel for burial.
Interior Minister Claude Gueant described the suspect as "someone very cold, very determined, very much a master of his movements, and by consequence, very cruel."
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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