"Islamic Warrior," Mohamed Merah, Jumps to his Death in a Hail of Bullets

In the end, Mohammed Merah jumped out of the window with a gun in his hand, still shooting. He was found dead on the ground.

They finally killed the jihadist who opened fire on a Jewish school in France and slaughtered Jewish children and a Rabbi in cold blood.

Will the Muslim community in France, famous for its rampages and car burnings, decry this deed and Islamic Jew-hatred?

The self-avowed "Islamic warrior" died as a martyr. Will the media finally address motive, the ideology that commands jihad? No. Already the the enormous Islamic media machine has begun. Despite the jihadist's own words, the quran's own words, the prophet's own words, the media and Western intellectuals will say the motive was …. anything rather than what it is. It is what it is. A is A.

Police have had Mr. Merah's building surrounded since 3. am local time Wednesday morning, when they first tried to force their way into his apartment before being rebuffed in a volley of gunfire. In the long hours since, they made repeated attempts to rattle Mr. Merah with a series of loud blasts at his building and insisted their top priority was to take the man, who claimed responsibility for the attacks in talks with his police negotiators on Wednesday, alive and bring him to justice.

Mr. Guéant said the suspect had warned police that he would not surrender and wanted to die in combat, prompting authorities' decision to try to apprehend him by storming his apartment. Police first threw grenades into the apartment, as they had done during the night, but this elicited no reaction, said Mr. Guéant. (WSJ here)

The Telegraph has this:

Mohamed Merah killed in firefight with police
• Gunman leapt from window still firing
• 'Al-Qaeda' gunman began 'shooting madly'
• Merah found dead on ground outside flat
• Two police injured, one with foot wound
• 32-hour siege ends in five-minute gun battle
• More than 300 rounds fired in fierce exchange
• Officers storm building after series of explosions

_Latest 13.32 US military officials in Afghanistan say they have "no information" about the Toulouse gunman being held by international forces after he was detained in the country French prosecutor Francois Molins said yesterday that Afghan police detained Mohamed Merah at a checkpoint and handed him over to US troops "who put him on the first plane back to France". But Lieutenant Colonel Jimmie Cummings, spokesman for NATO's US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), said he was not aware of this. He said:

As of now I have no information on him being in ISAF or US custody. We are working to ascertain the details of his activities, to include if he was detained, during his suspected time in Afghanistan.

13.12 Mohamed Merah's former lawyer Christian Etelin has criticised police tactics which led to the al-Qaeda gunman's death. He told AFP:

His death is the logical outcome of the strategy adopted, he was increasingly shut up in his autism, in his removal from reality, nothing was done to help him and reestablish a link, dialogue.

I would have liked for everything to have been done to understand how he could have undertaken such a process of dehumanisation… this is a missed opportunity for understanding of human beings.

He said the police strategy during a 32-hour siege of Merah's flat "could only push him straight towards being hardline and wanting to die with weapons in his hands".

13.01 A French teenager who was wounded during Mohamed Merah's gun attack outside a Jewish school is now in a critical but stable, his uncle Patrick Bijaoui says.

He remains in a critical state but Aaron, who is 15-and-a-half, is young and robust. He's not in a coma. He's breathing unaided and can speak a little, but the morphine has clouded his consciousness.

Mr Bijaoui said Aaron had received surgery twice on Monday after he was shot in the attack at the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse, in which three younger children and a teacher died.

The .45 round from the attacker's handgun passed through the boy's left arm and then right through his torso, skimming his heart and puncturing his lungs and stomach, he said. Referring to Mohamed Merah, he said:

It is a shame that he's dead and won't face justice, but at the same time we're relieved for the rest of the population that he's no longer in a position to harm anyone.

[...]

11.31 Dozens of police and firefighters are walking away from the scene with relieved expressions on their faces.

11.20 RAID police entered the flat through the front door and the windows after the shutters on the property were removed, Claude Gueant, French Interior Minister said. He said the move followed a promise by the gunman yesterday that he would surrender at 10.45pm. Mr Gueant said:

We therefore made contact with him (at 10.45pm last night) but he indicated that he would not surrender and that if we attempted to seize him he would kill the police, so the decision was made to seize him.

He added that grenades were hurled into the property by RAID officers at around 10.30am this morning before police moved in fully "aware of the danger and threat" that lay before them.

_{Armed RAID officers prepare to storm Mohammed Merah's flat}

11.12 Claude Gueant added that two police officers were receiving treatment following the firefight, one for a foot injury and another who is suffering shock. He said:

I want to pay tribute to the extreme devotion and courage of the RAID police. I want to thank all the police for the incredible investigation that has been done. They managed to identify the killer in such a short period of time.

11.03 French Interior Minister Claude Gueant has just given a remarkable description of the gun battle which ended in Mohammed Merah's death less than half an hour ago. He said the police decided to storm the building after the gunman had threatened to kill police and refused to surrender late last night. Describing the raid itself, he said:

We sent in special cameras to be able to see where he was but we could not locate him. It was when we were able to locate him in the bathroom that he came out shooting madly at everybody.

The police had never seen anything like this kind of violence and the RAID officers had to protect themselves.

In the end, Mohammed Merah jumped out of the window with a gun in his hand, still shooting. He was found dead on the ground.

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Atlas Shrugs on 22 March 2012