A rabbi, his two sons and another child were shot dead in front of their school in France by a suspected serial killer on a scooter today.
The attack came at about 8am, just before the start of lessons at the Ozar Hatorah school in the south-west city of Toulouse. Security was immediately increased at all Jewish schools across the country, the interior ministry announced.
It was the latest in a week of similar attacks in France. A gunman on a motorbike opened fire on three uniformed paratroopers at a bank machine on Thursday in Montauban, 50km from Toulouse, killing two and critically wounding the other. Four days earlier, a gunman on a scooter shot and killed another paratrooper in Toulouse.
Police said today's killings were carried out with the same heavy calibre .45 automatic pistol that was used in the two other attacks.
Toulouse prosecutor Michel Valet said a 30-year-old rabbi and his three-year-old and six-year-old sons were killed in the attack just before classes started at the Ozar Hatorah school. He said another child, between eight and 10 years old, was also killed. A 17-year-old child was seriously hurt and is in critical condition.
The rabbi was named locally as Johnathan Sandler, who taught Yiddish at the school. He arrived from Jerusalem last September with his wife and children.
“A man arrived in front of the school on a motorcycle or scooter,” Mr Valet said, adding that the man got off the scooter and opened fire. “He shot at everything he had in front of him, children and adults. The children were chased inside the school."
The prosecutor said the suspect probably used two weapons, including one of a large calibre, before getting back on the scooter and riding away. It is believed at least 15 shots were fired.
President Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande, the Socialist opposing him in his uphill bid for re-election in May, both cancelled appointments to head to the shooting scene to show sympathy for the victims and support for greater security. ."This is a terrible tragedy," Mr Sarkozy said in a radio interview. "The entire French republic is touched by this terrible drama."
Mr Sarkozy denounced “the savagery” of the attack and vowed to find the killer or killers. “We will find him,” he said.
The killings could bring the theme of security back to the top of the agenda in a bitter election campaign that has been dominated by issues of taxation and immigration.
Mr Sarkozy also said there were striking similarities between the shootings. "We are struck by the similarities between the modus operandi of today's drama and those last week even if we have to wait to have more elements from the police to confirm this hypothesis," Mr Sarkozy said in Toulouse. He said that one of the soldiers killed in the earlier incidents had been of Caribbean origin and the other two were Muslims.
The school, behind a high white wall with few external markings, was cordoned off by police, who then escorted other children out.
France has the largest Jewish community in western Europe, estimated at about 500,000. France also has the largest Muslim population in western Europe, about five million.
As messages of condolence poured in from across Europe, representatives of France's Jewish community voiced their solidarity."The whole Jewish community is in mourning," said Rabbi Moshe Lewin, a spokesman for France's great rabbi. "In the face of such a drama, such a horror, one cannot but go there."
In Jerusalem, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said “whether it was a terror attack or a hate crime, the loss of life is unacceptable.”
Agencies