March 19 (Bloomberg) -- Four people were killed and one seriously injured in a shooting in front of a Jewish school in a residential neighborhood of Toulouse, the French prosecutor’s office said.
The shooter, who escaped on a scooter, had two weapons, Le Figaro reported, citing the prosecutor, who’s at the school. A teacher of religion and three children were shot dead.
“It was terrible,” Charles Ben Semoun, the father of a child at the school, said on i-tele television. “It felt like it lasted a long time.”
Today's killings come after attacks left three soldiers of North African descent dead last week in Toulouse and nearby Montauban. A fourth soldier is in critical condition.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy will be at the school, Ozar Hathora, at 11:30 a.m., a statement from his office said. French Interior Minister Claude Gueant will be heading to Toulouse, and the ministry is reinforcing security at Jewish schools, Agence France-Presse said.
Sarkozy will be accompanied by Education Minister Luc Chatel and Richard Prasquier, president of the council of Jewish institutions of France. Socialist presidential candidate Francois Hollande and the Israeli ambassador to France also are heading to Toulouse.
“We are profoundly shocked at the killing of innocent children,” Sammy Ravel, an official from the embassy, said on i-tele.
The French news service cited Patrick Rouimi, a spokesman for the school’s parents’ association, as saying that the man on the scooter had opened fire at about 8 a.m. today on people waiting near the student pick-up point.
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