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| 8-year-old Miriam Monsonego, daughter of school headmaster Rabbi Yaacov Monsonego, who was killed in a shooting attack at the Ozar Hatorah School in Toulouse, France |
(Telegraph) The dark motor scooter pulled up and a man described as "determined and athletic" dismounted. Without removing his helmet or saying a word, he opened fire.
Witnesses described how the gunman aimed at whoever was in his path, first shooting Jonathan Sandler, 30, a rabbi and teacher, along with his two sons, Aryeh, six, and Gavriel, three, as they waited for a minibus to take them to their nursery. All three are dead.
Then, when his 9mm weapon jammed, the killer switched to a .45-calibre gun, entered the school gates and chased children as they fled for cover.
He shot a 17-year-old pupil, who is now fighting for his life in hospital, and then cornered eight-year old Miriam, the daughter of the school principal, Yaacov Monsonego. He put the gun to her head and shot her.
As pupils ran from the large courtyard into salmon pink school buildings, the killer turned, mounted his scooter and sped off, plunging a nation into shock at the worst anti-Semitic atrocity on French soil in decades.
"He was calm and determined. In cold blood he assassinated them as if he was killing animals," said Nicola Yardeni, the regional president of CRIF, France's Jewish organisation, after viewing CCTV footage of the shootings from surveillance cameras.
"You see a man park his motorcycle, start to shoot, enter the school grounds and chase children to catch one and shoot a bullet into her head. It's unbearable to watch. He was looking to kill."
Police began a huge manhunt, erecting roadblocks across Toulouse, and put extra security outside religious schools across France. The attack is being linked with two other shootings in the Toulouse area in little more than a week, prompting fears that France is dealing with a racist serial killer.
Last Thursday, three soldiers were shot as they stood by a cash machine in Montauban, 30 miles north of Toulouse, by a gunman dressed in black and riding a motor scooter. Two of the victims, aged 26 and 24, died immediately. They were of north African descent. The third, 28, who is in a coma in hospital, is from the French overseas region of Guadeloupe.
A witness described how the gunman approached one soldier who was wounded and attempting to crawl away, turned him over with his foot and fired three more shots into him before getting back on his scooter and making his escape.
Four days previously in Toulouse a 30-year old soldier from the 1st Parachute Logistics Regiment was shot dead – again by a gunman on a motor scooter. The victim was also of north African origin.
One of the weapons used at the school was the same calibre as that used in the attacks on the soldiers – a .45 calibre automatic pistol.
There were reports in France that police were looking for three former soldiers of the logistics regiment sacked for "neo-Nazi" activities. The men were all ejected from the army in 2008 after a photograph emerged of them making Nazi salutes in front of a swastika. "Police are interested in locating those men to see if there may be some connection," said a source close to the investigation.
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