So, it IS a radical Islamic terrorist who did these killings in France.

By Murray Wardrop
3:00PM GMT 21 Mar 2012

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• 'Al-Qaeda' gunman 'planned to kill again'
• Sakozy: soldiers died in 'terrorist execution'
• Suspect named as Mohammed Merah, 23
• Merah previously 'broke out of Afghan prison'
• Gunman cornered and family arrested
• Tense stand-off after two officers injured
• Killer 'sought revenge for deaths of Palestinian children'
• French Burka ban 'inspired killings'

Latest

15.54 Prosecutor Francois Molins said the US army previously sent the Toulouse gunman back to France after he was arrested in Afghanistan. Afghan police detained Mohammed Merah and then handed him over to the US army "who put him on the first plane headed to France," Mr Molins said.

He added that Merah had been to Afghanistan twice and had trained in the militant stronghold of Waziristan.

15.48 News agencies are snapping that Mohammed Merah had planned to kill another soldier and two police officials, according to a French prosecuter. We will bring you more on this as it drops.

15.40 A scooter dealer has explained how he played a key role in leading police to the alleged Toulouse gunman Mohammed Merah. Christian Dellacherie, the owner of the Yam 31 Yamaha dealership, said he had provided the name of the suspected killer. He said that when police showed him surveillance video footage of the attack on a Jewish school that killed three children and a teacher, he noticed the scooter used in the attack had been partially repainted white. He told AFP:
A young man that we knew had come to see us a few days earlier and had asked us for information about the geo-localisation chip in his machine. He mentioned in an off-hand way that he had just taken apart his scooter to repaint it.
I gave them the first and last names of the young man, which we had in our database since he was 14 years old.
He said he "made the connection" while watching the video.
15.28 Henry Samuel, our France correspondent, writes that the revelation that the Toulouse gunman has links with al-Qaeda is likely to influence the French presidential election campaign, and could prove a gift for the far-Right National Front candidate Marine Le Pen.
The latest developments have sparked a tussle over which issues the campaign will now centre – the need for greater tolerance, understanding and national unity, or anger at perceived laxism towards extremism and a call for a security crackdown that could favour the Right and far-Right.
Marine Le Pen – who has previously likened Muslims praying in the streets to the Nazi occupation of France – clearly tried to set the tone by claiming the "Islamic fundamentalist threat has been underestimated in our country and political-religious groups are developing due to a certain laxism. Security is a theme that has just signed up to the presidential campaign."
15.10 Nicolas Sarkozy has told a memorial services for the three soldiers shot by the Toulouse gunman that the killings were a calculated attack on France and the French army. Addressing mourners in Montauban, the French President said:
A French soldier knows death and knows how to look it in the face, but the death our men met was not the death for which they were prepared. It was not death on the field of battle but a terrorist execution. They were killed because they were French soldiers. It was the French army... this republic that the killer wanted to destroy and attack.
He added that the killer had sought to bring France "to its knees" but had failed, during his speech at the barracks of the 17th Parachute Engineering Regiment.
15.03 Islam should not be blamed for the Toulouse shootings, writes the Telegraph's Ed West.
It’s easy to get it wrong because so many of the world’s varied extremists, whatever their motivation and however much they might hate each other, focus their anger and loathing on similar targets – the state, the city, modernity, capitalism, and the one group who embody all these complicating, unsettling changes in the minds of lonely, failed young men – Jews. People often make the wrong call because that’s what they want to believe, because it fits into their narrative. The recent shootings in Toulouse are a case in point.
Many people kill in the name of jihad but they do not represent Islam or Muslims, the vast majority of whom will be horrified by the Toulouse killings. It is not religion that turns some young Muslim men in the West violent, but the sense of alienation and frustration that inevitably comes from being a second-generation immigrant.
14.56 Nicolas Sarkozy has now arrived at a memorial service in Montauban for the three soldiers killed by the Toulouse gunman. We'll bring you more on this when we have it.
14.48 The gunman has planned to carry out another attack today, French President Nicolas Sarkozy reportedly told religious leaders in Toulouse. AFP reports:
Sarkozy told Jewish community representatives the suspected Islamist gunman besieged in Toulouse had planned another attack Wednesday. Nicole Yardeni, head of the CRIF Jewish group in the Midi-Pyrenees region, said Sarkozy had told them the shooter "already had a plan to kill again" and that "he planned to kill this morning".

more at:Toulouse siege: live - Telegraph