PARIS/BAMAKO (Reuters) – France warned on Wednesday the seizure of northern Mali by a Tuareg-led rebellion was playing into the hands of local al Qaeda units, urging neighbors including Algeria to do more to tackle the threat.

For long one of the most stable democracies in West Africa, Mali has plunged into turmoil since a widely condemned March 22 coup that emboldened Tuareg rebels in their quest for a northern homeland.

PARIS (Reuters) – Police arrested 10 suspected Islamist militants in dawn raids across France on Wednesday after a shooting spree by an al Qaeda-inspired gunman prompted President Nicolas Sarkozy to order a security clampdown, just ahead of an April 22 election.

The DCRI domestic intelligence service, supported by elite police commandos, carried out arrests in the southern cities of Marseille and Valence, two smaller towns in the southwest, and in the northeastern town of Roubaix, a police source said.

PARIS (Reuters) – Thirteen people linked to a radical French Islamist group arrested last week are being put under investigation on suspicion of terrorism, the Paris public prosecutor said on Tuesday.

Those under inquiry were among 19 arrested in swoops across several cities on March 30, a week after police killed Mohamed Merah, an al Qaeda-inspired gunman who shot dead seven people, including three Jewish children, in three separate attacks.

PARIS (Reuters) – France is pushing for the U.N. Security Council to issue a statement on Mali later on Tuesday to show its support of the 15-state West African bloc ECOWAS’s efforts to find a solution to the escalating crisis.

Speaking to reporters, Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said Paris had put forward several topics of discussion that it wanted the Security Council to back.

TOULOUSE, France (Reuters) – Minutes after commandos stormed the apartment building where al Qaeda-inspired gunman Mohamed Merah was holed up and shot him dead, neighbor Jean-Marc was out on the street venting his anger.

“They criticize Marine Le Pen for her views on immigration and security but look at what’s happening. Now people will listen,” said the cafe owner in this southern city, where Merah plotted the murder of three soldiers, a rabbi and three Jewish children.

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 (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.