Toulouse shoot out with 24 year old 'French Algerian jihadist' Mohammed Merah, 3 French police injured.

Toulouse shoot out with 24 year old 'French Algerian jihadist' Mohammed Merah, 3 French police injured.(JPost).TOULOUSE, France - A gunman suspected of killing three children and a rabbi at a Jewish school wounded three police officers in a shootout at a house in Toulouse in southwestern France on Wednesday and said he was a member of al-Qaida. Police believe the suspect to be holed up in the building.
French Interior Minister Claude Gueant said the man targeted in the raid was a 24-year-old Algerian man Mohammed Merah who had visited Afghanistan and Pakistan, and had shot dead the four out of revenge for France's military involvement abroad. He is also suspected by authorities of having killed three soldiers of North African origin last week.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, campaigning for re-election in a presidential poll in five weeks time, has blamed racism for Monday's school attack. His handling of the crisis could be a decisive factor in determining how the French people vote."He claims to be a mujahideen and to belong to al-Qaida," Gueant told journalists in Toulouse, referring to the gunman.
"He wanted revenge for the Palestinian children and he also wanted to attack the French army because of its foreign intervention."His two brothers are also detained by police seeking to verify their roles in the case.France has troops in Afghanistan as part of NATO forces.
Gueant did not say how they had tracked the man down, but that police were talking to his brother at a separate location in connection to the killings.
His mother had also been brought to the scene to help negotiate with the man, who is holed up in a small apartment building in the leafy neighborhood.But she would not get in touch him, claiming to have no more influence over him, as is the case with many jihadists who turn away from their families.
The fact that he's gone to Pakistan on two occasions showed that he had links with organized Islamist networks.The suspect stayed twice in Pakistan in 2010 and 2011. He was arrested in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan in late 2010. Afghan officials have warned the French police, who inserted his name from that date in their information files.Heavily armed police in bullet-proof vests and helmets cordoned off the area where the raid was taking place, in a suburb a few kilometers from the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school where Monday's shootings took place.Reuters witnesses heard several shots at about 0440 GMT.A police source said the police could launch an assault if the standoff lasted for some time. "There are more and more people around, so this creates a dangerous situation."Read the full story here, Live report here from French Station.