CBS/AP) TOULOUSE, France - An Islamic extremist who boasted of killing seven people to strike back at France died after being shot in the head by police as he jumped out of his apartment after a fierce gunfight with police, authorities said.
His dramatic death ended a more than 32-hour standoff with an elite police squad trying to capture him alive. The suspect, 23-year-old Mohamed Merah, was wanted in the deaths of three paratroopers, three Jewish schoolchildren and a rabbi — all killed since March 11 in what he reportedly told police was an attempt to "bring France to its knees."
CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reports that Merah appeared to be a very happy, normal 24-year-old fellow in a video that was shot by a friend in the past several years. But he had a long string of delinquent crimes, and it appears he was quietly being radicalized in by Muslim extremists.
French killings suspect liked "cars, girls"
Prosecutor Francois Molins said Merah, a French citizen of Algerian descent who claimed links to al Qaeda, burst out of his bathroom when police entered his apartment Thursday morning, wildly firing his handgun about 30 times and jumping out an apartment window.
Merah continued to fire "until he was hit by a retaliatory shot from the RAID (elite police unit), which felled him with a bullet to the head," Molins said.
Merah had filmed all three killings, and claimed to have posted them online. Police have viewed the videos.
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