Siege Of French Gunman Into Second Day 
 
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 Explosions have been heard outside an apartment in Toulouse as French police try to pressure a gunman accused of killing seven people into ending a stand-off now in its second day. 
 
 Self-declared al Qaeda militant Mohammed Merah has been holed up in the ground floor property since the early hours of Wednesday. 
 
 :: Click here to read a more up-to-date version of this story. 
 
 Negotiations have continued all day but Merah reportedly said he would surrender at night "to be more discreet". 
 
 The series of blasts began at around midnight local time (11pm GMT) and have continued periodically throughout the night. It is being reported that police have been exploding charges to intimidate the suspect. 
 
 The deputy mayor of Toulouse had said an assault on the building had begun - a claim then denied by interior ministry official Pierre-Henry Brandet. 
 
 Mohammed Merah as shown in undated video aired on France 2 tv channel 
 
 Mr Brandet said: "There were moves to intimidate the gunman who seems to have changed his mind and does not want to surrender. There is no assault." 
 
 Explosions rocked the district of the southwestern city and orange flashes lit up the sky. 
 
 Reuters news agency cites a police source as saying the blasts blew open the door of Merah's apartment but local French media reported that the wanted man was still inside. 
 
 There were also reports of gunfire at the site. Merah is thought to be armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle, a Mini-Uzi submachine pistol and a collection of handguns. 
 
 Street lighting in the area was turned off earlier as officers continued to surround the apartment block. 
 
 sarkozy: we will not give in to terror 
 
 The 23-year-old, a French national of Algerian descent, is suspected of killing three Jewish schoolchildren, a rabbi and three paratroopers in a wave of attacks in southern France in recent days. 
 
 He has reportedly told police that he carried out the murders to "avenge Palestinian children". 
 
 He had also admitted that he planned to kill a soldier on Wednesday morning. 
 
 "This will not last for days, because of physical and mental fatigue. All the experience with crazed gunmen like this is that they stop at some point," defence minister Gerard Longuet said on TF1 television. 
 
 "What we want is to capture him alive, so that we can bring him to justice, know his motivations and hopefully find out who were his accomplices, if there were any," he added. 
 
 President Nicolas Sarkozy has said Merah wanted to bring the nation "to its knees". 
 
 The politician, speaking at a memorial service for three soldiers killed by the gunman last week, said the killer had failed to divide France. 
 
 The scooter allegedly used in the attacks has been seized by police. 
 
 The French prosecutor handling the case, Francois Molins, said Merah had been to Afghanistan twice and had trained in the militant stronghold of Waziristan. 
 
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 His brother, who has been arrested, had been implicated in a network sending fighters to Iraq. 
 
 A car belonging to him has also been seized after it was said to contain explosives. 
 
 Mr Molins told reporters the US army sent Mohammed Merah back to France after he was arrested in Afghanistan. 
 
 Afghan police apparently detained the man at a road checkpoint and handed him over to the US army "who put him on the first plane headed to France," he said. 
 
 If it is Mohammed Merah and he is the al Qaeda killer French police have been hunting, then many viewers glued to the live TV coverage of the siege won't be bothered if the police shoot him or he kills himself. But the armed officers surrounding him will prefer to take him alive. Sky's Martin Brunt on what police may be planning 
 
 He also apparently told French media that he has video footage showing his killing sprees and that he is planning to post them online. 
 
 Mr Molins said the suspect "expresses no regret, only that he didn't have time to have more victims. And he even bragged, he said, of bringing France to its knees". 
 
 Shots rang out at the start of the operation on Wednesday morning after officers spoke to the suspect at the door. At least two policemen were injured in the gunfire. 
 
 france shootings: what we know about the gunman 
 
 Terrified neighbours were evacuated from their flats roughly nine hours after the siege began. 
 
 The suspect threw a handgun out of the window in exchange for a communications device but still had other weapons. 
 
 He told police he is a "mujahideen" or Islamic warrior fighting to avenge the deaths of Palestinian children killed in conflict with Israel. 
 
 The French government said its intelligence services had been tracking him for years. 
 
 Merah's name can be expected to have come up as he was arrested in Afghanistan in 2010 and as he was French the authorities in Paris will have been informed. Read Tim Marshall's piece on clues left by the suspect 
 
 Later he added: "He had for several years been tracked by the DCRI (French intelligence agency) and its agents in Toulouse but there was never anything to suggest that he was preparing a criminal act." 
 
 The Palestinian premier Salam Fayyad has strongly condemned the suspect's claim he was acting to avenge Palestinian children. 
 
 "It is time for these criminals to stop marketing their terrorist acts in the name of Palestine and to stop pretending to stand up for the rights of Palestinian children who only ask for a decent life," he said. 
 
 Officers brought the suspect's mother to the scene and tried to get her to help in the negotiations but she refused, saying she had "little influence" over him. 
 
 The block of flats is surrounded by police and residents are still inside (Source: Google) 
 
 The suspect's mother, brother and the brother's girlfriend have been arrested. 
 
 Explosives were found in the brother's car, police said. 
 
 Jonathan Sandler, his sons Arieh and Gabriel, and Miriam Monsonego 
 
 France launched one of the biggest manhunts the country has ever seen following the deaths of three children and a teacher at a Jewish school on Monday. 
 
 A gunman riding a scooter attacked the Ozar Hatorah school in broad daylight just as pupils were arriving. 
 
 It was soon linked to two separate shootings in nearby Montauban earlier this month in which three French soldiers were killed and another seriously injured. 
 
 :: READ MORE - The Gunman's Trail Of Deadly Shootings 
 
 All of the soldiers killed were of North African descent and police have said the three attacks were all carried out by an assailant using the same gun and scooter. 
 
 The four victims of the school shooting were buried at a Jerusalem cemetery on Wednesday after being flown to Israel. ||||| Story highlights Siege has lasted more than 24 hours 
 
 Police continue to negotiate with the suspect, who has been holed up for hours 
 
 President Obama offers condolences to the victims' families, Sarkozy's office says 
 
 Police believe Merah killed seven people, including a rabbi and Jewish children 
 
 Mohammed Merah, 23, suspected in seven recent killings, remained holed up Thursday in an apartment in the southern French city of Toulouse, more than 24 hours after hundreds of officers lay siege. 
 
 Police continued to demand the surrender of the self-proclaimed jihadist. 
 
 Merah is wanted in the killings of three French paratroopers and of three students and a rabbi at a Jewish school in Toulouse, in a string of shootings that began on March 11. He opened fire on police as they tried to break down his apartment door about 3:30 a.m. Wednesday, wounding two officers, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said. 
 
 Wednesday evening, police switched off the street lights in the district around the apartment, leading to speculation that a new raid was imminent as talks stalled. 
 
 Three loud explosions and flashes of light erupted shortly before midnight -- but Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre Henry Brandet told CNN the blasts were meant to pressure Merah back into talks with negotiators, and police had not moved in on the apartment. 
 
 Around 12:30 a.m. Thursday (7:30 p.m. Wednesday ET), a police convoy left the scene with what appeared to be someone huddled beneath a blanket in the back seat of one of the cars. But there was no sign the siege was breaking up, and two more explosions rang out about an hour later. 
 
 Merah told French police that he trained with al Qaeda in Pakistan's Waziristan region, bordering Afghanistan, and that he planned to attack more soldiers and police Wednesday, Molins said. He said he was acting alone, the prosecutor added. 
 
 Ebba Kalondo, the senior news editor of the television network France 24, told CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront" that the suspect had called her about two hours before police arrived at his residence and laid out details of the killings that only police would have known -- "very, very specific information" such as the number of shots fired and the shell casings left behind. 
 
 "He seemed to be very aware that a massive manhunt was under way for him," Kalondo said. "He said he wasn't scared, and that neither capture nor death scared him at all." 
 
 Hours into the siege, French President Nicolas Sarkozy spoke at a memorial service for the three paratroopers, calling their killing "a terrorist execution." 
 
 One of the victims was due to become a father soon, but "a killer without scruples decided that he would never meet the child to be born," Sarkozy said. 
 
 Earlier Wednesday, Sarkozy called on his nation "to unite together to show that terrorism will not be able to fracture our national community." 
 
 Sarkozy's office said U.S. President Barack Obama had called his French counterpart to offer his condolences and praise the efforts of French police. France and the United States are more determined than ever to fight together against terrorist brutality, Sarkozy's office said. 
 
 Merah had been under surveillance by French intelligence for years, Interior Minister Claude Gueant said. 
 
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 He had "already committed certain infractions, some with violence," Gueant said. 
 
 Merah was sentenced 15 times by a Toulouse juvenile court when he was a minor, Molins said. 
 
 He was back in a Toulouse court February 24 for causing an accident with injuries and driving without a license and was sentenced to a month in jail, his lawyer Christian Etelin said on BFM-TV. He had not begun serving that sentence, Etelin said. 
 
 The attorney also said Merah went to Afghanistan two years ago. 
 
 He was sent back to France after Afghan police picked him up at a traffic stop and alerted international forces to his presence, Molins said. 
 
 The French defense ministry said Merah had twice tried to join the French military. His first attempt was in the northern city of Lille, where he was refused because of prior convictions, and his second, in July 2010, was in Toulouse, where he sought to join the Foreign Legion but left during the first round of tests. 
 
 Gueant said in Toulouse on Wednesday that he expected Merah to give himself up, but the standoff continued. 
 
 At one point, a handgun was thrown from the window of the apartment, but the minister said the suspect had other weapons, as well as a car containing more arms near his apartment. 
 
 Merah broke off communications with police late in the morning, Gueant said, but started talking again several hours later, a police officer said. The suspect was being stubborn and difficult to talk to, said Didier Martinez, a Toulouse police press officer. 
 
 Merah was born in Toulouse, said Elisabeth Allanic, a magistrate at the Paris prosecutors office. Gueant said he was of Algerian origin. 
 
 Gueant said Merah "wanted to avenge Palestinian children and take revenge on the French army because of its foreign interventions." 
 
 France has about 4,000 troops supporting the NATO mission in Afghanistan. The government has said it will pull them out by 2013. 
 
 Merah also was opposed to France's recent move to ban women from wearing a full veil, or burqa, Molins said. 
 
 Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad strongly rejected using his people as a justification for the French killings, calling them a "cowardly terrorist attack." 
 
 "It is time for those criminals to stop exploiting the name of Palestine through their terrorist actions," Fayyad said in a statement Wednesday. 
 
 The suspect belongs to a group called Forsane Alizza, or Knights of Glory, Gueant said. The French government banned the group in January for trying to recruit people to fight in Afghanistan. 
 
 The group issued a "chilling warning" on its Facebook page before it was banned this year, calling on supporters to attack Americans, Jews and French soldiers, terror expert Sajjan Gohel said. 
 
 Police tracked the suspect down via his brother's computer IP address, which was apparently used to respond to an ad posted by the first victim, Gueant said. 
 
 Imad Ibn Ziaten, a paratrooper of North African origin, arranged to meet a man in Toulouse to sell him a scooter he had advertised online, the minister said. The victim said in the ad that he was in the military. 
 
 A message sent from the suspect's brother's IP address was used to set up an appointment to inspect the bike, an appointment at which the paratrooper was killed March 11, Gueant said. 
 
 Four days later, two other soldiers were shot dead and another injured by a black-clad man wearing a motorcycle helmet in a shopping center in the city of Montauban, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Toulouse. 
 
 In the attack at the private Jewish school Ozar Hatorah on Monday, a man wearing a motorcycle helmet and driving a motor scooter pulled up and shot a teacher and three children -- two of them the teacher's young sons -- in the head. 
 
 The other victim, the daughter of the school's director, was killed in front of her father. 
 
 Police, who said the same guns were used in all three attacks, launched an intense manhunt and late Tuesday night zeroed in on the apartment, about 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) from the Jewish school. 
 
 Meanwhile, the bodies of the four victims in the school shooting arrived in Israel, where they were buried in Jerusalem. 
 
 "Today, all Israel is in pain and mourning over the deaths of innocent children and a dedicated father," Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon told the families as the coffins were lowered from the plane. 
 
 The teacher, Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, was born and raised in Bordeaux, in southwestern France, but pursued his religious studies in Israel. He married and had children before returning to teach at the Toulouse school, French Jewish representatives said. His sons, Gabriel, 4, and Arieh, 5, were buried with him. 
 
 The other victim, 7-year-old Miriam Monsonego, was buried separately on Wednesday. 
 
 Forty percent of French practicing Jews are buried in Israel, according to the Consistory of Paris, a group representing Jewish communities. 
 
 The U.S.-based Muslim Public Affairs Council condemned the French attacks "in the strongest terms possible," in a statement Wednesday. 
 
 The group's president, Salam Al-Marayati, said: "(We) call upon the people of France to come together and not allow their national resilience to be impacted by these acts of terror." ||||| 1 of 27. An undated and non-datelined frame grab from a video broadcast March 21, 2012 by French national television station France 2, who they claim to show Mohamed Merah, the suspect in the killing of 3 paratroopers, 3 children and a rabbi in recent days in France. 
 
 TOULOUSE, France | 
 
 TOULOUSE, France (Reuters) - French police launched an assault late on Wednesday on an apartment where a gunman suspected of killing seven people in the name of al Qaeda was holed up, officials said. 
 
 Three loud blasts were heard at the site in the southwest city of Toulouse just before midnight, which blew open the door of the apartment where the gunman had been holed up since 3 a.m. (10.00 p.m. EDT), a police source said. 
 
 "I confirm that the assault has started," a police source told Reuters. The deputy mayor of Toulouse, Jean-Pierre Havrin, confirmed that negotiations had ended and the assault had begun. 
 
 Police had been trying to get 24-year-old Mohamed Merah to turn himself over after he fired through the door at them while they tried to storm his apartment in the suburbs of Toulouse in the early hours of Wednesday morning. 
 
 The 24-year-old Muslim shooter has been bottled up by France's elite RAID commandos since 3 a.m. (10.00 p.m. EDT) inside a five-storey building in a suburb of Toulouse - a drama that has gripped France a few weeks ahead of a close-fought presidential election. 
 
 Police reinforcements had arrived at the scene at around 10 p.m. (5.00 p.m. EDT) and authorities switched off street lights in the street, signaling that action would begin soon. 
 
 "This will not last for days, because of physical and mental fatigue. All the experience with crazed gunmen like this is that they stop at some point," Defence Minister Gerard Longuet said on TF1 television on Wednesday. 
 
 "What we want is to capture him alive, so that we can bring him to justice, know his motivations and hopefully find out who were his accomplices, if there were any," he added. 
 
 Thomas Withington at the London Centre for Defence Studies said an elite commando team could launch an assault after throwing a stun grenade into the house. 
 
 "What complicates things is that they want to take him alive. They want to wait until he gets very tired," he said. 
 
 Merah, who has told police negotiators he was trained by al Qaeda in the lawless border area of Pakistan, said he killed three French soldiers last week and four people at a Jewish school in Toulouse on Monday to avenge the deaths of Palestinian children and because of French army involvement in Afghanistan. 
 
 A French citizen of Algerian origin, Merah boasted to police negotiators he had brought France to its knees and said his only regret was not having been able to carry out his plans for more killings. 
 
 "He has no regrets, except not having more time to kill more people and he boasts that he has brought France to its knees," Paris Prosecutor Francois Molins, part of the anti-terrorist unit leading the investigation, told a news conference. 
 
 Merah had already identified another soldier and two police officers he wished to kill, Molins said. 
 
 "He has explained that he is not suicidal, that he does not have the soul of a martyr and that he prefers to kill but to stay alive himself," the prosecutor said, adding that Merah had repeated promises to surrender to police. 
 
 CALL FOR UNITY 
 
 Earlier, at a ceremony in an army barracks in Montauban, near Toulouse, President Nicolas Sarkozy paid tribute to the three soldiers of North African origin killed last week. A fourth soldier of Caribbean origin is in a coma. 
 
 "Our soldiers have not died in the way for which they had prepared themselves. This was not a death on the battlefield but a terrorist execution," he said, standing before three coffins draped in the French flag. 
 
 "This man wanted to bring the Republic to its knees. The republic did not give in, the republic did not back down, the republic has not weakened. The republic has done its duty, and tomorrow justice will be done," said Sarkozy, who is running for re-election in five weeks time. 
 
 U.S. President Barack Obama spoke by phone with Sarkozy to voice his solidarity with the government and people of France. 
 
 Several other presidential candidates also attended the ceremony, including Socialist Francois Hollande, who is ahead of Sarkozy in voting intention polls. 
 
 Sarkozy's appeal for unity came after far-right leader Marine Le Pen, a rival presidential candidate, said France should pursue war on Islamic fundamentalism. 
 
 But leaders of the Jewish and Muslim communities said the gunman was a lone extremist and called for calm and unity. 
 
 Sarkozy's handling of the crisis could be a decisive factor in determining how the French people vote in the two-round presidential elections in April and May. 
 
 Immigration and Islam have been major campaign themes after Sarkozy tried to win over the voters of Le Pen, who accused the government of underestimating the threat from fundamentalism. 
 
 France's military presence in Afghanistan has divided the two main candidates in the election. Hollande has said he will pull them out by the end of this year while Sarkozy aims for the end of 2013. 
 
 SURVEILLANCE 
 
 Interior Minister Claude Gueant said Merah was a member of an ideological Islamic group in France but this organization was not involved in plotting any violence. 
 
 He said Merah had thrown a Colt 45 pistol of the kind used in all the shootings out of a window of the block of flats, where he has been living, in exchange for a mobile phone. 
 
 Two police officers were injured in a firefight with the gunman after police swooped at 3 a.m. (0200 GMT) on Wednesday. Officials said police had also arrested Merah's girlfriend and his brother, known to authorities as a radical Islamist. 
 
 The raid came just three days after the school attack and followed an unprecedented manhunt by French security forces. 
 
 Merah's first attack, on March 11, was on a soldier he had contacted on the pretext of wanting to buy his motorcycle. 
 
 Gueant said police identified the IP address he used because he was already under surveillance for radical Islamist beliefs. 
 
 "We knew, and that is why he was under surveillance, that he had travelled to Afghanistan and Pakistan," the minister said. 
 
 After Merah's attack on the Jewish school, police received a tipoff from a scooter repair shop in Toulouse where the gunman asked how to remove a GPS tracker device. 
 
 Merah's telephone was tapped from Monday and with the help of other information the police decided to raid his house. 
 
 A group of young men from Merah's neighborhood described him as a polite man of slight build who liked football and motorbikes and did not seem particularly religious. 
 
 "He isn't the big bearded guy that you can imagine - you know the cliche," said Kamal, who declined to give his family name. "When you know a person well you just can't believe they could have done something like this." 
 
 Merah's lawyer Christian Etelin, who has defended him in several minor crimes, said that his client had a tendency towards violence that had worsened after a stay in prison and trips to Afghanistan and Pakistan. 
 
 "There was his religious engagement, an increasing hatred against the values of a democratic society and a desire to impose what he believes is truth," Etelin told France 2 television, adding he had not expected this level of violence. 
 
 The Jewish victims from the Ozar Hatorah school were buried in Jerusalem on Wednesday. Parliament speaker Reuben Rivlin said in his eulogy at the hill-top cemetery that the attack was inspired by "wild animals with hatred in their hearts". 
 
 (Additional reporting by Jean Decotte and Nick Vinocur in Toulouse; Brian Love, Daniel Flynn, Geert De Clercq, Alexandria Sage and Leigh Thomas in Paris; Joseph Heller in Jerusalem; Writing by Geert De Clercq; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
– Conflicting reports out of Toulouse: Though USA Today reported earlier, by way of French TV, that a 24-year-old Muslim man suspected in a series of shootings had been arrested after a raid on an apartment, reports are now saying the building remains surrounded. CNN and Reuters report that some 300 police officers have ringed the building and are trying to draw Mohammad Merah out. After severing communication in late morning, he is apparently talking with police once again. A police rep had told the AP that police would bust their way in if he didn't turn himself in this afternoon as promised; they earlier evacuated the building. An Afghanistan prison warden tells Reuters that Merah was among those freed in a mass Taliban jail break. Another chilling revelation: Nicolas Sarkozy today told a Jewish group that the gunman "had a plan to kill again ... this morning." A police source confirmed that the suspect "told investigators this morning that he had decided to kill a soldier in Toulouse on Wednesday morning and had already identified the victim."