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Gun in French School Shooting Linked to Prior Attacks

By CHRISTOPHE SCHPOLIANSKY and NICK SCHIFRIN (@nickschifrin)

PARIS March 19, 2012

School children are comforted at the scene of a fatal shooting after a gunman opened fire outside the Ozar Hatorah school, March 19, 2012 in Toulouse, France. (Gilles Bouquillon/Getty Images)

 

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Gilles Bouquillon/Getty Images

School children are comforted at the scene of... View Full Size

Gilles Bouquillon/Getty Images

School children are comforted at the scene of a fatal shooting after a gunman opened fire outside the Ozar Hatorah school, March 19, 2012 in Toulouse, France.

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"It is too early to link the different shootings, but there are similarities between these shootings: same modus operandi, same area," French Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet told ABC News. "The shooter in all these cases was very determined."

Witnesses of today's shooting described a horrific scene at the drop-off point for nursery- and primary-age students.

"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 father whose child attends the school told RTL radio, according to the Guardian. "I did not find my son. Apparently he fled when he saw what happened. How can they attack something as sacred as a school?"

"Just because we are different doesn't mean we should be killed," one student's father, in tears, told the local newspaper Sud Quest from outside the school.

One student described how the shooting began just as she arrived for her morning prayers. "We were really afraid," she told Sud Quest. She said after police arrived, the children sat down, were given water, and prayed together.

The killer arrived at the school carrying two weapons, including the same .45 caliber gun that killed one of the soldiers in Thursday's attack, according to the Toulouse-based La Depeche newspaper.

The man who was killed is has been to have been a teacher ? and perhaps a rabbi -- at the school.

Police say they have locked Toulouse down as they hunt for the killer, and the government tightened security at all religious sites in France, particularly Jewish schools. Sixty police officers, including anti-terrorist police, are helping with this investigation after they had already begun examining the attacks on the troops.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is running for re-election, immediately flew to Toulouse, which is about 425 miles south of Paris.

"Whatever happens," he said, "faced with this kind of toll, we can say that the French Republic as a whole has been hit by this appalling tragedy."