French Killings Suspect Dies Shooting At Police, Authorities Say
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From Diana Magnay and Saskya Vandoorne
TOULOUSE, France (CNN) -- The French police siege to capture a suspected al Qaeda-trained militant came to a bloody end Thursday morning, with commandos shooting Mohammed Merah in the head as he fired wildly back at them, authorities said.
Merah emerged from a bathroom, firing more than 30 shots at police as they burst into his apartment to end a standoff that had lasted more than 31 hours, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said.
He jumped out a window, still firing wildly, and was found dead on the ground, Interior Minister Claude Gueant said.
Two police officers were injured in the raid, Gueant said.
Merah had only two bullets left in his gun when he was killed, Molins said.
Merah, 23, was wanted in the killings of three French paratroopers and of three students and a rabbi at a Jewish school in Toulouse, in a string of shootings that began on March 11.
Police found video recordings of the attacks, ammunition and ingredients for explosives after he was killed, Molins said.
He was wearing a bulletproof vest when police raided his apartment Thursday morning, the prosecutor said.
He originally said he would surrender to police, Gueant said, but later vowed that he would resist and kill anyone who tried to take him into custody.
Gueant had said earlier police wanted to capture him alive, saying the priority was "to hand him over to the authorities."
Merah had said he wanted to "die with weapons in his hands," Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said overnight.
After Merah's death, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said everything had been done to bring him to justice alive.
But, he said, security forces could not be exposed to more danger as they sought to arrest him, since enough lives had already been lost.
Sarkozy's political rival, Socialist presidential candidate Francois Hollande, congratulated police and said France had always shown that it "knows how to stand up against its worst enemies without losing any of its values."
Police had surrounded Merah's house at 3:30 a.m. Wednesday, having tracked him down through computer sleuthing and clues linked to his motorcycle, authorities said.
As police first attempted to seize him early Wednesday morning, Merah shot and wounded two officers, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said.
Merah had told French police that he had planned to attack more soldiers and police Wednesday, and that he was acting alone, Molins said.
Molins said Merah had trained with al Qaeda in Pakistan's Waziristan region, bordering Afghanistan, and had spent time in Afghanistan.
He was sent back to France after Afghan police picked him up at a traffic stop and alerted international forces to his presence, Molins said.
Christian Etelin, a lawyer who had represented Merah in an earlier incident involving a traffic accident, also said Merah went to Afghanistan two years ago.
After the suspect's death, Etelin said that Merah was psychologically damaged.
"He was completely cut off from reality," Etelin said on CNN affiliate BFM TV.
Ebba Kalondo, the senior news editor of the television network France 24, told CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront" earlier that the suspect had called her about two hours before police surrounded his home and laid out details of the killings that only police would have known -- "very, very specific information" such as the number of shots fired and the shell casings left behind.
"He seemed to be very aware that a massive manhunt was under way for him," Kalondo said. "He said he wasn't scared, and that neither capture nor death scared him at all."
Merah had been under surveillance by French intelligence for years, Interior Minister Gueant said.
He had "already committed certain infractions, some with violence," Gueant said.
Merah was sentenced 15 times by a Toulouse juvenile court when he was a minor, Molins said.
The French defense ministry said Merah had twice tried to join the French military. His first attempt was in the northern city of Lille, where he was refused because of prior convictions, and his second, in July 2010, was in Toulouse, where he sought to join the Foreign Legion but left during the first round of tests.
Merah was born in Toulouse, said Elisabeth Allanic, a magistrate at the Paris prosecutors office. Gueant said he was of Algerian origin.
Gueant said Merah "wanted to avenge Palestinian children and take revenge on the French army because of its foreign interventions."
France has about 4,000 troops supporting the NATO mission in Afghanistan. The government has said it will pull them out by 2013.
Merah also was opposed to France's recent move to ban women from wearing a full veil, Molins said.
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad strongly rejected using his people as a justification for the French killings, calling them a "cowardly terrorist attack."
"It is time for those criminals to stop exploiting the name of Palestine through their terrorist actions," Fayyad said in a statement Wednesday.
The suspect belongs to a group called Forsane Alizza, or Knights of Glory, Gueant said. The French government banned the group in January for trying to recruit people to fight in Afghanistan.
The group issued a "chilling warning" on its Facebook page before it was banned this year, calling on supporters to attack Americans, Jews and French soldiers, terror expert Sajjan Gohel said.
Police tracked the suspect down via his brother's computer IP address, which was apparently used to respond to an ad posted by the first victim, Gueant said.
Imad Ibn Ziaten, a paratrooper of North African origin, arranged to meet a man in Toulouse to sell him a scooter he had advertised online, the minister said. The victim said in the ad that he was in the military.
A message sent from the suspect's brother's IP address was used to set up an appointment to inspect the bike, an appointment at which the paratrooper was killed March 11, Gueant said.
Four days later, two other soldiers were shot dead and another injured by a black-clad man wearing a motorcycle helmet in a shopping center in the city of Montauban, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Toulouse.
In the attack at the private Jewish school Ozar Hatorah on Monday, a man wearing a motorcycle helmet and driving a motor scooter pulled up and shot a teacher and three children -- two of them the teacher's young sons -- in the head.
The other victim, the daughter of the school's director, was killed in front of her father.
Police, who said the same guns were used in all three attacks, launched an intense manhunt and late Tuesday night zeroed in on the apartment, about 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) from the Jewish school.
CNN's Pierre Meilhan, Dan Rivers, Stephanie Halasz, Dheepthi Namasivayam, Anna Pritchard and Kareem Khadder contributed to this report.
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CONTACT USDriver eludes Jersey City police in chase, but leaves heroin behind: authorities |
Driver eludes Jersey City police in chase, but leaves heroin behind: authorities
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A man eluded capture after a high-speed chase, but police seized five bundles of heroin from his vehicle, police said. (Google Maps)
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Jersey City police may not have corralled a driver who led them on a high-speed chase across the city this morning, but they didn't come away empty-handed, authorities said.
When the driver ended his wild ride with a crash on Bramhall Avenue and fled, police found five bundles that each contained 10 packets of heroin, police said.
Police saw a&2001 gold Dodge Intrepid on Martin Luther King Drive with no lights on and being driven recklessly, police said. They tried to get the driver to pull over, but the driver refused to stop and continued south on MLK Drive, before heading west on Virginia Avenue and then south on Bergen Avenue, a police report said.
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After continuing the chase east on Atlantic Avenue, officers were ordered to stop pursuing the vehicle as the Dodge turned north on Sackett Street, the report says. Two minutes later, a different officer who was driving west on Bramhall Avenue discovered that the car had crashed into a parked vehicle on Bramhall and the driver jumped out of the passenger side of the vehicle and ran toward Bergen Avenue, according to police.
Police set up a perimeter bordered by Bramhall and Bergen avenues and Atlantic and Sackett streets to locate the driver, described by one officer as having a “full grown bushy beard.”
The driver eluded capture, but a search of the vehicle resulted in the discovery of five bundles of 10 envelopes of suspected heroin in the glove box, the report said.Police appeal dropped after missing Watton man makes contact with Hungarian authorities - News - Watton and Swaffham Times
Police appeal dropped after missing Watton man makes contact with Hungarian authorities
Police are no longer appealing for information on the whereabouts of a Watton man.
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Peter Budd, 27, was reported missing in April this year after he said he was visiting a friend in Felixstowe, Suffolk.He said he would stay in the coastal town for a week but no-one heard from him.Mr Budd has since made contact with authorities in Hungary and Norfolk police are no longer making inquiries in relation to him.
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