TOULOUSE, France (Reuters) – France’s presidential election race resumes on Friday, irrevocably altered by the killing of an al Qaeda-inspired gunman whose murders have shifted the political debate in favor of incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy.

Mohamed Merah’s cold-blooded shootings of seven people, including three Jewish schoolchildren, forced politicians to suspend normal campaigning while a giant manhunt closed in on the 23-year-old unemployed panel-beater.

TOULOUSE, France, March 22 (Reuters) – A 23-year-old gunman
who said al Qaeda inspired him to kill seven people in France
died in a hail of bullets on Thursday as he scrambled out of a
ground-floor window during a gunbattle with elite police
commandos.

Mohamed Merah, a Frenchman of Algerian origin, died from
gunshot wounds at the end of a 30-hour standoff with police at
his apartment in southern France and after confessing to killing
three soldiers, three Jewish children and a rabbi.

TOULOUSE, France, March 22 (Reuters) – A 23-year-old gunman
suspected of killing seven people in southwestern France in the
name of al Qaeda, jumped from a window to his death in a hail of
bullets after police stormed his apartment on Thursday.

“At the moment when a video probe was sent into the
bathroom, the killer came out of the bathroom, firing with
extreme violence,” Interior Minister Claude Gueant said, adding
that Merah was firing several guns at once.

TOULOUSE, France, March 22 (Reuters) – Police stormed the
apartment on Thursday of a 23-year-old gunman suspected of
killing seven people in southwestern France in the name of al
Qaeda, setting off explosions and firing shots to try to force
him to surrender.

“They are in the apartment, they are using gas to try to
paralyse him,” said Nicole Yardeni, local head of Jewish
umbrella group CRIF, who is in contact with security officials,
shortly before the gunfire was heard.

TOULOUSE (Reuters) – The man without a face, dark visor down on his motorcycle helmet, strides after a child into her schoolyard, grabs her by the hair and calmly shoots her in the head.

Cold-blooded killing gets no more glacial than the murder of 8-year-old Myriam Monsonego by a serial gunman who one witness described wearing a camera to film his victims and was called by his pursuers “meticulous”, “calculating” and “well prepared”.

TOULOUSE, France, March 22 (Reuters) – French police fired
shots and set off explosives roughly every hour outside an
apartment block in southern France on Thursday to try to force
out a 24-year-old gunman suspected of killing seven people in
the name of al Qaeda.

Some 27 hours after 300 police first surrounded the
five-storey building in a suburb of the prosperous industrial
city of Toulouse, Mohamed Merah, a French citizen of Algerian
origin, was refusing to give himself up.

TOULOUSE/PARIS, France (Reuters) – French police tried to flush out a 24-year-old gunman suspected of killing seven people in the name of al Qaeda, with explosions and gunfire heard outside his apartment on the second day of a siege in the southern French city of Toulouse.

In a drama gripping France five weeks before a presidential election, some 300 police have laid siege since Wednesday to the five-storey house in a suburb of the prosperous industrial town in a bid to capture the shooter, Mohamed Merah.

TOULOUSE, France, March 21 (Reuters) – French police
launched an assault late on Wednesday on an apartment where a
gunman suspected of killing seven people in the name of al Qaeda
was holed up, officials said.

Three loud blasts were heard at the site in the southwest
city of Toulouse just before midnight, which blew open the door
of the apartment where the gunman had been holed up since 3 a.m.
(0200 GMT), a police source said.

TOULOUSE, France, March 21 (Reuters) – French police played
a waiting game on Wednesday night with a besieged gunman
suspected of shooting dead seven people in the name al Qaeda,
seeking to capture alive a militant who had boasted of bringing
France to its knees.

The 24-year-old Muslim shooter, identified as Mohamed Merah,
has been bottled up by France’s elite RAID commandos since 3
a.m. (0200 GMT) inside a five-storey building in a suburb of the
southwest city of Toulouse – a drama that has gripped France a
few weeks ahead of a close-fought presidential election.