Police fear gunman on bike could strike again

FRENCH AUTHORITIES fear the gunman suspected of killing seven people in the southwest of the country in the past 10 days could strike again.

Interior minister Claude Guéant said an investigation team of about 200 officers was dealing with hundreds of potential leads but that police had so far made few significant advances in trying to identify the killer.

“We’re worried about the possibility that he wants to carry out another attack,” said Mr Guéant.

“Each hour of work brings new elements. We’re checking the past of certain people, we’re checking witness accounts, material elements.”

The Paris prosecutor, François Molins, said police were sifting through a huge volume of material, including 7,800 hours of CCTV footage from the town of Montauban alone.

Two soldiers were shot dead in Montauban, some 45km from Toulouse, last week in an attack police have linked to the earlier killing of another paratrooper and the gun attack on a Jewish school.

Mr Molins, who has overall responsibility for counter-terrorism investigations, said the gunman knew he was being tracked and was “likely to act again”.

Behavioural analysts have been brought in to help police draw a profile of the gunman. Mr Molins described him as “an extremely determined individual” who was acting in a premeditated fashion and used the same modus operandi. All his victims were shot in the head at point-blank range.

Mr Molins noted that there had been a gap of four days between each of the attacks, though, he added, there was no certainty he would stick to this pattern.

Ballistics tests showed all the victims had been shot with the same weapon, a Colt .45 gun. The killer also used the same model of scooter, a high-powered Yamaha TMAX 130, in all three attacks.

However, Mr Molins said it had not been established whether he used the same scooter, as the model seen at the site of the first attack was black, while the one used in the school shooting was white.

Mr Guéant had earlier speculated that the gunman might have changed the livery on the scooter between attacks. He also revealed that one witness had reported seeing a camera strapped to the killer’s chest.

French schools observed a moment of silence yesterday morning to honour the three children and a rabbi killed in Monday’s attack. President Nicolas Sarkozy, visiting a school in Paris, said the children killed “are exactly like you” and that the attack “could have happened here”.

He has pledged to make all necessary resources available to investigators working on a case that has shocked the country and led to the suspension of the presidential election campaign just a month before voting begins.

“We will track down this monster,” foreign minister Alain Juppé said. “We will find him, bring him to justice and punish him.”

Mr Sarkozy will travel to Montauban today for a funeral service for the three dead paratroopers, who were of North African and Caribbean origin. His socialist challenger for the presidency, François Hollande, is also due to attend, as are National Front leader Marine Le Pen and centrist candidate François Bayrou.

Mr Bayrou became the most prominent figure to draw a link between the attacks and the political climate yesterday when he criticised those who “stir up divisions” in French society.

That led to a stern rebuke from Mr Juppé, who said the campaign – in which themes such as immigration, secularism and national identity have been prominent – could not have triggered the shooting.

“Nobody should try to benefit in any way from this drama, which is in no way linked to the electoral campaign,” Mr Juppé said.

The bodies of the four victims of Monday’s attack on the Ozar Hatorah school, who hold dual French-Israeli nationality, were due to be repatriated to Israel overnight for burial in Jerusalem today. Mr Juppé’s office said he would accompany the bodies.

The Israeli embassy identified the victims as Jonathan Sandler (30), his children Gabriel and Arieh, aged four and five, and seven-year-old Myriam Monsonego.

The paratroopers killed in last week’s attacks were Abel Chennouf (25), Mohamed Legouad (24) and Imad Ibn Ziaten (30).