PARIS — Mohammed Merah, French law enforcement officials said, started his career as an Islamic terrorist March 11 by shooting a French soldier of Muslim origin in the head at close range after telling him, “You kill my brothers, so I am killing you.”
Merah, a 24-year-old French national of Algerian heritage, ended his career — and his life — at 11:30 a.m. Thursday by bursting out of the bathroom where he was hiding and opening fire with a vintage Colt .45 pistol on a squad of commandos who had pushed into his Toulouse apartment after a 31-hour siege.
The young man fired so many rounds that the semiautomatic pistol sounded like an assault rife, said Francois Molins, the chief Paris prosecutor heading the investigation into Merah’s actions. The police fired back as Merah fled toward a sliding window opening onto a balcony, Molins said, putting a bullet through his head and sending him plunging lifeless to the ground.
Interior Minister Claude Gueant said two of the commandos were wounded in the flat.
In the interval between March 11 and Thursday’s violent end, Merah had made France tremble with his cold-blooded killings, riding up on a motor scooter and opening fire on unsuspecting people in the southwestern French cities of Toulouse and Montauban.
According to what he told police negotiators, his motive was to avenge Israel’s killing of Palestinian children, France’s military involvement in Afghanistan and a year-old French law banning full-face Muslim veils.
On March 15, Merah shot two more French soldiers in the head, both of them Muslims, and grievously wounded a fourth. Four days later, using the same pistol, he shot dead three Jewish schoolchildren and a rabbi in front of the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse, all four dual Israeli-French citizens.
Only minutes after police picked up Merah’s slim body, draped in a traditional Arab djellaba covering a bullet-proof vest, President Nicolas Sarkozy went on television to draw lessons from the tragic 11-day episode. The first and most important lesson, he said, was that France’s ethnic and religious groups must remain united under the flag.
“Today the French people must overcome their indignation and avoid giving free rein to their anger,” he said.
Olivier Athouel, whose child attends Ozar Hatorah but was unhurt, told a television interviewer that he was glad the standoff at Merah’s apartment ended in his death.
“His life is gone, and so much the better,” he said.
