Suspect dead as French siege ends in gunfire

A man suspected of killing seven people has died after a raid by French armed police on an apartment in the city of Toulouse.Heavy gunfire lasting several minutes could be heard on Thursday as police entered the apartment of the suspect, named as Mohammed Merah, after a 32-hour standoff, Al Jazeera’s Jacky Rowland reported.Claude Gueant, France’s interior minister, said the suspect had emerged from the bathroom of the apartment and started firing at police as they used a video camera to check each room of the upper-floor apartment. He then jumped out of a window.“The forces used video to inspect rooms inside the apartment, and there was no sign of the man, who stayed in his bathroom. When they started to inspect it he came out of the bathroom shooting with ferocity that those at the scene had not seen before,” Gueant said.“In the end, Mohammed Merah jumped from the window with his gun in his hand, continuing to fire. He was found dead on the ground,” he addedMerah was suspected of killing three French soldiers in two separate attacks last week, and of killing three children and a rabbi at a Jewish school in Toulouse on Monday.More loud explosions again shook the neighbourhood earlier on Thursday, after similar blasts late on Wednesday in what Al Jazeera’s Rowland said appeared to be an effort to put the suspect under added psychological pressure intended to convince him to surrender himself.Our correspondent said police had been instructed to take the suspect alive.Suspect was wanted alive“They want him alive, they want to put him on trial; also they want to question him on whether he has any others associates,” she said.Francois Molins, France’s top anti-terrorism prosecutor, said on Wednesday that Merah had been planning another attack, prompting police to surround his apartment.French police on Monday launched a huge manhunt after the school shootings in Toulouse, and the Midi-Pyrenees region was put on its highest level of security alert.Jonathan Sandler, a 30-year-old Frenchman, his two sons, five-year-old Arieh and four-year-old Gabriel, as well as seven-year-old Myriam Monsonego, were buried on Wednesday at the Givat Shaul cemetery in Jerusalem.Police said that the same weapon and the same stolen scooter appeared to have been used in both the school attack and the two attacks on soldiers.