Deadly attacks: French police besiege ‘al Qaeda’ gunman

Merah, French­man of Algeri­an descen­t, fought off severa­l police assaul­ts on his flat, says traine­d by al...

TOULOUSE: French police on Wednesday laid siege to an apartment block, where a self-declared al Qaeda militant, who has claimed a series of deadly attacks on troops and Jewish children, was holed up.

Prosecutors said the suspect, Mohamed Merah, who is French of Algerian descent, had fought off several police assaults on his flat and bragged to negotiators of having been trained by the militant outfit on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

“He expressed no regret apart from not having had enough time to kill more victims, and even boasted of having brought France to its knees,” France’s top anti-terror prosecutor Francois Molins told reporters. Molins said Merah had claimed responsibility for three cold-blooded shootings over the previous 10 days, in which three French paratroopers, three Jewish children and a teacher were killed.

Merah added that he was not seeking to be a martyr and would give himself up later. He claimed to be avenging Palestinian deaths, opposing the French military’s involvement in Afghanistan and France’s ban on full-faced veils.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 22^nd, 2012.