Al Qaeda militant killed in France

Merah, the main suspect in a wave of shootings that killed seven people, had tried to blast his way out of the siege in the city of Toulouse after members of an elite force known as RAID entered his flat. But Interior Minister Claude Gueant said the 23-year-old had been found dead on the ground in a dramatic end to the lengthy standoff. He jumped out of an apartment window at the end of a 32-hour siege in southern France. Three police were wounded in the assault, one “fairly seriously”, with journalists able to hear sustained gunfire from at least two weapons as police entered the flat in Toulouse where Mohamed Merah was holed up. Around 300 shots were fired in all during the assault and Merah was wearing a backpack with unknown contents when they found him, police sources said, after a siege of over 30 hours. Merah had been holed up since overnight Wednesday after being tracked down by police as the main suspect in a wave of shootings that killed seven people, including three soldiers and three Jewish children, was holed up. Prosecutors said Merah, a Frenchman of Algerian descent, had fought off several police assaults on the flat on Wednesday and bragged to negotiators of having been trained by al Qaeda on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.