Four dead as gunman on a motorbike opens fire at Jewish school in France
• Prosecutor: Gunman “shot at everything”
• Minister: “Similarities” between shooting and previous attacks
• Police open anti-terrorism probe into three incidents
• Sarkozy: Attack is “abominable” and “national tragedy”
• Gunman opened fire as parents were dropping off children
• Dead include teacher and his two sons
• City on lockdown as police hunt killer
Prosecutor Michel Valet said the father, a teacher aged 30, was shot dead along with his sons aged just three and six.
He said another child aged between eight and 10 years old was also killed, while a 17-year-old was seriously injured.
Mr Valet described a chilling scene. “He shot at everything he could see, children and adults, and some children were chased into the school,” he said.
One parent described the incident as “a vision of horror”.
The government has ordered that security be tightened at Jewish schools and all religious buildings following the attack, which was condemned by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Jewish organisations in France, and the Israeli foreign ministry.
The shooting comes just days after two other incidents in which soldiers were gunned down by a man on a motorbike in the same region.
France: 4 dead in shooting at Jewish school in Toulouse
Gunman opens fire outside Ozar Hatorah school before fleeing the scene on scooter; teacher and two of his children among dead, several wounded; Jewish official: This was an anti-Semitic attack.
A gunman opened fire at a crowd of parents and children outside a Jewish school in Toulouse, France on Monday morning, killing four people.
Eyewitnesses said the unknown assailant drove up to the Ozar Hatorah school’s entrance on a black scooter around 8:00 AM and fired at the gatherers with a pistol.
Yonathan Sandler, a 30-year-old teacher from Jerusalem; his two children Aryeh, 6, and Gavriel, 3; and the 8-year-old daughter of the school’s principle died in the attack and several others were wounded.
“I saw two people dead in front of the school, an adult and a child… Inside, it was a vision of horror, the bodies of two small children,” a distraught father whose child attends the school told RTL radio.
“I did not find my son, apparently he fled when he saw what happened. How can they attack something as sacred as a school, attack children only sixty centimeters tall?”
