Toulouse and Montauban shootings

On 11 March, Master Sergeant Imad Ibn-Ziaten, a 30-year-old off-duty French Moroccan paratrooper in the 1st Parachute Logistics Regiment (1er Régiment du train parachutiste), was killed by a point-blank shot in the head in front of a middle school in Southeast Toulouse.

Ibn-Ziaten was known to be waiting to meet someone who said he was interested in buying a motorcycle from him.

Police suspected that the shooter set up the meeting in order to attack the paratrooper.

The perpetrator was described as wearing a helmet and riding a motorcycle.

The family of Ibn-Ziaten buried him in their hometown of M'diq, Morocco.

On Thursday, 15 March, at around 14:00, two uniformed soldiers, 25-year-old Corporal Abel Chennouf and 23-year-old Private Mohamed Legouad, were shot and killed and a third, 27-year-old Loïc Liber, was seriously injured by shooting (and left tetraplegic) as the three were withdrawing money from a cash machine outside a shopping centre in Montauban, around 50 km north of Toulouse.

The Toulouse and Montauban shootings were a series of Islamist terrorist attacks committed by Mohammed Merah in March 2012 in the cities of Montauban and Toulouse in the Midi-Pyrénées region of France.

He targeted French Army soldiers as well as children and teachers at a Jewish school.

In total, seven people were killed and five more wounded.

Merah, a 23-year-old French petty criminal of Algerian descent born and raised in Toulouse, began his killing spree on 11 March, shooting an off-duty French Army paratrooper in Toulouse.

On 15 March, he killed two off-duty uniformed French soldiers and seriously wounded another in Montauban.

On 19 March, he opened fire at the Ozar Hatorah Jewish day school in Toulouse, killing a rabbi and three children, and also wounding four others.

After the shootings, France raised its terror alert system, Vigipirate, to the highest level in the Midi-Pyrénées region and surrounding departements.

Merah, who filmed his attacks with a body-worn camera, claimed allegiance to Al-Qaeda.

He said he carried out his attacks because of France's participation in the War in Afghanistan and its ban on Islamic face veils, and justified his attack on the Jewish school because "The Jews kill our brothers and sisters in Palestine".

He was killed on 22 March by a police tactical unit after a 30-hour siege at his rented apartment there, during which he wounded six officers.

His brother and another man were later convicted of taking part in a "terrorist conspiracy" over the attacks, which were condemned by the French Council of the Muslim Faith, the United Nations and many governments around the world.

According to one of his brothers, unrelated with his criminal activities, Merah and his siblings were raised in an "atmosphere of racism and hatred" in their Muslim family, headed by their mother alone after their father left when Merah was young.

They lived in the poor neighborhood of Toulouse.

French investigators believe that Merah turned to Salafism after being imprisoned as a young man for petty crimes; he was believed to have become increasingly radical after taking two journeys to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Merah had tried to enlist in the French Army, but was rejected because of his criminal convictions.

Some sources have noted connections of Merah's family (through his mother's second marriage) to a man who was aligned with the terrorist group al-Qaeda.

They also reported Merah's history of psychological issues as factors in the shootings.

Merah said he was a mujaheed and claimed ties to al-Qaeda, but French authorities found no evidence of that and denied his claim.

President Sarkozy described the attack as isolated.

The police investigation found that Merah had made more than 1,800 calls to over 180 contacts in 20 different countries, in addition to having taken several trips to the Middle East and Afghanistan, and they suggested he might have been in touch with others about his planned attacks.

Police found that Mohammed Merah was the shooter (see below).

Authorities determined that he used the same weapon in all the attacks: a .45 pistol.

In all three attacks, witnesses observed that the helmeted shooter arrived and left on the same scooter, which was found to have been stolen.

They were all from the 17th Parachute Engineer Regiment (17e Régiment du génie parachutiste), whose barracks are close to the town.

The security cameras showed the killer riding a powerful maxi-scooter and wearing a black helmet.

While taking aim, the killer reportedly pushed aside an elderly woman waiting to withdraw money from the cash machine.

The Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse is part of a national chain of at least twenty Jewish schools throughout France.

It educates children of primarily Sephardic, Middle Eastern and North African descent, who with their parents have made up the majority of Jewish immigrants to France since the late 20th century.

The school is a middle and secondary school, with most children between the ages of 11 and 17.

It also serves as a transportation node for other schools.

Many parents bring their younger children to Ozar Hatorah, to place them on shuttle buses that travel to the other schools in the area.

At about 8:00 am on 19 March, a man rode up to the Ozar Hatorah school on a Yamaha TMAX motorcycle.

Dismounting, he immediately opened fire toward the schoolyard.

The first victim was 30-year-old Jonathan Sandler, a rabbi and teacher at the school who was shot outside the school gates as he tried to shield his two young sons from the gunman.