French police lay siege on lone gunman’s apartment

French police began to close in on a suspected gunman who boasted of shooting seven victims in an al Qaeda-linked terror spree.

A TV grab released by French TV France 2 showing an image of 23-year-old Frenchman of Algerian descent Mohammed Merah, suspected of a series of deadly shootings in Toulouse and Montauban which killed seven persons, including three children.

He expressed no regret, only that he didn’t have time to have more victims

Three explosions were heard near the apartment building in southwest France where the suspect, 24-year-old Mohammed Merah, was holed up.

Orange flashes lit up the night sky with each blast near the Toulouse apartment building.

Police had been surrounding Mr Merah since a pre-dawn effort to arrest him went awry.

The gunman, wanted for shooting seven people dead, planned to turn himself in to French police surrounding him at night “to be more discreet,” the Interior Minister said earlier.

Claude Gueant said Mr Merah appeared to have acted alone in the killings – but also claimed to authorities that he met al Qaeda “chiefs” while travelling in Pakistan last year.

As night fell in France with scores of armed police surrounding his ground floor Toulouse flat, the stand-off moved into its 21st hour when French police special forces were ordered to move in.

Until going to press there was no confirmation as to whether the gunman was killed or taken alive.

Three police officer were wounded as they tried to arrest the Frenchman of Algerian descent during a raid about 3 a.m. the previous night.

Prosecutors have said Mr Merah was a self-taught radical Salafi who had been to Afghanistan twice and had trained in the Pakistani militant stronghold of Waziristan.

Mr Merah is wanted for killing three Jewish schoolchildren, a rabbi and three paratroopers in a wave of attacks in southern France.

He threw a Colt .45 handgun used in each of the three attacks out of a window in exchange for a radio to talk to police, but had more weapons including an AK-47 assault rifle.

In negotiations with police, Mr Merah “expresses no regret, only that he didn’t have time to have more victims. And he even bragged, he said, of bringing France to its knees,” prosecutor Francois Molins said.

Mr Merah was planning to kill another soldier imminently, so police had to launch the 3 a.m raid, Mr Molins said.

The gunman’s brother and mother were detained early yesterday. Mr Molins said the brother, Abdelkader, had been implicated in a 2007 network that sent militant fighters to Iraq. Mr Merah told police he belonged to al-Qaeda and wanted to take revenge for Palestinian children killed in the Middle East, Mr Gueant said, adding the gunman was also angry about French military intervention abroad.

“He wants to avenge the deaths of Palestinians,” Mr Gueant told reporters. “He’s (also) after the army.”

The police raid was part of France’s biggest manhunt since a wave of terrorist attacks in the 1990s by Algerian extremists. The chase began after France’s worst-ever school shooting on Monday and two previous attacks on paratroopers beginning on March 11, killings that have horrified the country and frozen campaigning for the French presidential election next month.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has played up nationalist themes in his bid for a second term.