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March 20, 2012 11:37 am
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French Authorities Launch Manhunt for Killer of 4 at Jewish School (VIDEO)

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avatar by Algemeiner Staff

French police assisting in the aftermath of Monday's attack. Photo: screenshot via LA Times.

Following Monday’s brutal attack at a Jewish school in Southern France, in which 4 people were killed and two were critically injured, new details are emerging about possible suspects and what happened during the shootings.

At least one person police are interested in questioning, has turned himself in.  He was a member of a French paratrooper division who was discharged for posing in front of a Nazi flag with two other people, both of whom were also let go from the 17th Parachute Engineer Regiment over the taking of the photograph.

French government officials have linked Monday’s killings to at least two other attacks in the area within the past 10 days, using forensic evidence. One of the guns used on Monday is the same one used to kill 3 other people in Southern France recently, sending hundreds of French police on a manhunt to find the suspect(s).

French Interior Minister Claude Guéant has also said that Monday’s killer is believed to have recorded his attack with a camera around his neck.

“This adds another element to the profile of the killer. It is someone who is cruel enough to record it,” according to Guéant.

“He shot at everything he had in front of him, children and adults. The children were chased inside the school,” said Pierre-Henry Brandet of France’s Interior Ministry.

Nicholas Sarkozy, the President of France, went to the Ozar Hatorah school on Monday just  hours following the attack,  saying the incident had reverberated across the country.

“The whole French republic is touched by this abominable drama,” he said.  “It’s a day of national tragedy. The barbary, the savagery, the cruelty cannot win. Hate cannot win. The nation is much stronger.”

“I saw at once a man in a helmet — not a military helmet, a motorcycle helmet — who had come into the playground of the school a few feet from the entrance.  He was shooting not haphazardly but directly as close as possible to the head of those, adults and pupils, around the entrance of the school,” a witness inside the school during the time of the shooting, told French television.

Ozar Hatorah are a group of schools throughout France that were set up to increase Jewish education where it was “lagging or non-existent”, following the holocaust, according to it’s website.

“Whether it was a terror attack or a hate crime, the loss of life is unacceptable,” said Israel’s Defense Minister, Ehud Barak.

Government and religious leaders from around the world have called on the French government to bring this case to justice, while Sarkozy has tightened security in the region around Toulouse and has raised the terror threat level to it’s highest ever in the area.

“We have to be very vigilant. There is one or more killer out there right now,” a French government spokesman said.

To view a video report, click below.

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