He targeted French Army soldiers as well as children and teachers at a Jewish school. Merah, a year-old [ 8 ] French criminal of Algerian descent born and raised in Toulouse, [ 9 ] 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.
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 , [ 3 ] and justified his attack on the Jewish school because "The Jews kill our brothers and sisters in Palestine ". 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 a poor neighborhood of Toulouse. Merah had tried to enlist in the French Army, but was rejected because of his criminal convictions. Merah said he was a mujaheed and claimed ties to al-Qaeda, [ 29 ] but French authorities found no evidence of that and denied his claim.
President Sarkozy described the attack as isolated. Police found that Mohammed Merah was the shooter see below. Authorities determined that he used the same weapon in all the attacks: a. Police suspected that the shooter set up the meeting in order to attack the paratrooper. The family of Ibn-Ziaten buried him in their hometown of M'diq , Morocco. 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.
