Post date: Mar 19, 2012 12:31:59 PM
PARIS, FRANCE (MARCH 19, 2012) (REUTERS) - Members of Paris' Jewish community expressed shock and outrage 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 on Monday (March 19).
Paris' Jewish community in shock following killing of least four people, including three children, by a man who opened fire outside a Jewish school in Toulouse.
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.
"I'm aghast, I'm really outraged at what has happened in Toulouse this morning. It is cowardly to attack children and I hope those who committed this act are severely punished," said Jonathan, a rabbi in Paris.
20-year-old Aaron, said the family of one of the victims was well known in Jewish circles.
"It's a family that was very active in the Jewish community of Toulouse, the family of the victim, of the little girl who died today. It's very very hard," he said.
Betty, an ex-student of the Ozar Hatorah school, where the shooting took place, said it was unclear whether the shooting was an act of anti-semitism.
"We hear anti-semitic threats everyday, be it in Paris or anywhere else. We are targeted on a daily basis. Is it a racist or anti-Semitic act? I don't know. In any case, I can only think that the person was aware of children's' arrival time, or of the places in the school where children gathered. It's upsetting, it's upsetting. Because they came at the time the children arrived, exactly at the time that the children came to school, so it was not harmless. Four-to-six-year old children. It's terrible, terrible," she said.
A rabbi at the school, identified as Rahamim Sabag, told Israel's channel two television that the dead were a 30-year old rabbi who taught at the school, the rabbi's five-year-old son and two eight-year old children, one of them the daughter of the school's principal.
A spokesman for the interior ministry said that security was being tightened at all Jewish schools in the country.
About 50 investigators are already looking into the killings of two soldiers on Thursday in the town of Montauban, close to Toulouse, as they tried to withdraw money from a cash machine close to the barracks of the 17th parachute regiment.
A third soldier was killed the previous weekend in Toulouse. Investigators had already confirmed on Friday that the same weapon had been used in both incidents.