Post date: Mar 19, 2012 12:28:14 PM
TOULOUSE, FRANCE (MARCH 19, 2012) (ITELEVISION) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he was filled with horror on Monday (March 19) after at least four people, including three children, were killed, when a man on a scooter opened fire outside a Jewish school in Toulouse in south-western France.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy expresses "horror" at Toulouse school shooting, says it is a "tragedy".
The attack also left several injured, two of them seriously, and followed the killing of three soldiers in two separate shootings in the same region last week by a man who escaped on a scooter.Parents outside the school in Toulouse expressed shock and anger.
"All the children from this school are like my children, they are my children", said one parent.
One news channel said that the gun used in the attack at the Ozar Hatorah school was of the same calibre as that used in the soldiers' shootings, but a spokesman for the interior ministry could not immediately confirm this.
"Horror. It's a tragedy. I have nothing that could explain the reason behind this. But I can accept that, this idea that someone can assassinate in front of a school, inside a school of Jewish children. It's a tragedy," said Sarkozy, on RFO television on Monday morning.
Sarkozy cancelled other appointments and left for Toulouse, accompanied by Education Minister Luc Chatel and the president of the CRIF French Jewish association, Richard Prasquier.