Police believe Toulouse killer may have filmed attack

TOULOUSE, France (AP) — Police blanketed southern France on Tuesday, searching for a gunman — possibly a racist, anti-Semitic serial killer — who killed four people at a Jewish school and may have filmed his attack.

Investigators believe the killer may have filmed the attack and were combing the Internet Tuesday to see if a video of the attack had been posted online.

The manhunt took place as friends and family tearfully mourned those slain — a rabbi, his two young sons and a young girl.

Authorities suspect the same killer was behind two recent attacks on French paratroopers of North African and French Caribbean origin that left three dead and one seriously wounded.

A “monster” is on the loose in France, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said, vowing to track him down.

France was reeling Tuesday after Monday’s shooting in the southern city of Toulouse, the deadliest school shooting in the country and the bloodiest attack on Jewish targets in decades. Schools across the country held a moment of silence Tuesday to honor the victims, who were heading to Israel for burial after a wrenching farewell ceremony in Toulouse.

Interior Minister Claude Gueant said one angle in the case is that of three paratroopers who were kicked out of a regiment near Toulouse in 2008 for suspected neo-Nazi activity. He insisted it was just one of many motives being investigated and “not favored any more than the others.”

Gueant said the attacker was “wearing around his neck an apparatus” that could be used to film and post video online. He said that gave investigators new clues to the killer’s “profile,” although he admitted they don’t appear to close to an arrest.

Gueant described the suspect as “someone very cold, very determined, very much a master of his movements, and by consequence, very cruel.”

In Monday’s shooting, the attacker first gunned down a rabbi and his two young sons, then chased down the daughter of the school principal, shooting her dead at point-blank range. Reports of the children’s ages varied, with the Israeli Embassy now saying the boys were 3 and 5 and the girl was 8.

The terror threat level was raised to scarlet across a swath of southern France — the highest level since the four-point system was created in 2003.

In Toulouse, France’s fourth city, the town center is usually bustling with activity, but the streets were emptier than normal Tuesday. In one main square, Place Wilson, a dozen police officers were on patrol, some guarding the subway entrance.

The shootings echoed across a nation that has been focused on an upcoming presidential race in which issues about religious minorities and race have gained prominence.

Police bearing automatic weapons stood in front of Jewish schools in Paris on Tuesday.

“It’s impossible not to imagine the worst, because it can happen to any child in France at some point,” said Mendy Sarfati, a father dropping his three children off at a Jewish school in Paris. “We want to put this drama behind us and for the French Republic to draw lessons from it.”

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.