Mohammed Merah -- the 23-year-old French Muslim gunman who killed seven people recently in the city of Toulouse in southwest France -- is dead after being shot in the head by a police sniper during a final dramatic shootout with French police, the Yahoo News website reports today (March 22, 2012).
It was the culmination of a 31-hour standoff with hundreds of French anti-terror police who had surrounded the building where Merah had barricaded himself.
Merah claimed responsibility for killing three young schoolchildren and their rabbi teacher at a Jewish school in Toulouse, and three French paratroopers of North African descent.
Merah cited the death of Palestinian children in Gaza, and opposition to France's role in the NATO peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan, as the reason for targeting Jewish schoolchildren and French troops.
