France shootings siege: Live Report
31.12.69
Here’s a outline of events:
Several hours of silence from a man accused of seven horror killings in France ended when the long arm of the law went into to his suburban flat, sparking a shootout which left him deathlike.
Mohamed Merah, a 23 year-old Frenchman of Algerian start, died as he jumped from a balcony still shooting after police found him hiding in the bathroom of the first trounce flat in the Belle Paule residential block where he lived.
Police officers say 300 bullets were fired in the gun battle which broke out when a specialist crew entered the flat to end the stand off with the self-proclaimed Al Qaeda backer who is said to have vowed to die “weapons in hand”.
Here’s how events developed:
1415 GMT: The action against Merah lasted so long “precisely because” the Rifle police team were observing the guidelines, prosecutor Francois Molins says.
“It is correctly because all this was done that the operation lasted so long, at RAID’s peril, with five of them wounded,” he says, adding that the wounds were moderate amusing, except for one to a policeman’s foot.
1401 GMT: French police were told to do everything to take self-proclaimed Al-Qaeda hit man Mohamed Merah alive when they raided his flat, prosecutor Molins says.
The heat were only authorised to open fire in self-defence but Merah shot at constabulary with a Colt .45 handgun during the raid and was killed with a bullet to the employer, the prosecutor at in a news conference.
1355 GMT: The self-proclaimed Al-Qaeda hostile who admitted gunning down seven people filmed all three attacks in southwestern France, a prosecutor says..
Francois Molins, France’s top anti-dread magistrate who is overseeing the probe into the killing of three soldiers, three Jewish children and a doctor, said Mohamed Merah filmed each attack in its entirety.
1349 GMT: MOHAMED MERAH FILMED “Hellishly EXPLICIT” SCENES OF ALL HIS KILLINGS: PROSECUTOR
Source: Outcome Magazine