23-year-old gunman who said al Qaeda inspired him to kill seven people in France died in a hail of bullets on Thursday as he scrambled out of a ground-floor window during a gunbattle with elite police commandos. Mohamed Merah, a Frenchman of Algerian origin, died from a gunshot wound to his head at the end of a 30-hour standoff with police at his apartment in southern France and after confessing to killing three soldiers, three Jewish children and a rabbi. "A killer wanted, according to his own words, to bring France to its knees by sowing hatred and terror. He has been neutralised," President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is running for re-election next month, told a campaign rally in the eastern city of Strasbourg. Merah fired frantically at police from a Colt 45 pistol as he climbed through his apartment window onto a verandah and toppled to the ground some 5 feet (1.5 metres) below, according to prosecutors and police. Two police commandos were injured in the operation - a dramatic climax to a siege in a suburb of the city of Toulouse which riveted the world after the killings shook France a month before a presidential election. Interior Minister Claude Gueant told reporters at the scene that Merah emerged from the bathroom firing repeatedly when police pushed a video probe into the room. "In the end, Mohamed Merah jumped from the window with his gun in his hand, continuing to fire. He was found dead on the ground." Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said Merah had taken refuge in his bathroom, wearing a bullet-proof vest under his traditional black djellaba robe, as police blasted his flat through the night with flash grenades. Opposition leaders, including far right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, demanded to know how Merah was able to amass a sizeable weapons cache and embark on his killing spree despite being under surveillance and having been questioned as recently as November by the DCRI domestic intelligence service following a trip to Afghanistan. "Since the DCRI was following Mohamed Merah for a year, how come they took so long to locate him?" Socialist party security spokesman Francois Rebsamen, saying Merah was top of a DCRI regional watchlist. In Washington, two U.S. officials said Merah was on a U.S. government "no fly" list, barring him from boarding any U.S.-bound aircraft. The officials said that his name had been on the list for some time. Neighbours watched from the sidelines as the drama exploded around a man friends have spoken of as an amateur soccer player who visited night clubs and was not outwardly religious or involved with radical politics. Police investigators were working to establish whether Merah had worked alone or with accomplices, Molins said, adding that Merah had filmed his three shooting attacks with a camera hung from his body and had indicated that he had posted clips online. The most disturbing image of the attacks was of him grabbing a young girl at a Jewish school on Monday by the hair and shooting her in the head. He escaped on a powerful scooter. The killings have raised questions about whether there were intelligence failures, what the attacks mean for social cohesion and race relations in France and how the aftermath will affect President Nicolas Sarkozy's slim chances of re-election. Sarkozy called Merah's killings terrorist attacks and announced a crackdown on people following extremist websites. "From now on, any person who habitually consults websites that advocate terrorism or that call for hate and violence will be punished," he said. "France will not tolerate ideological indoctrination on its soil." Lawyer Christian Etelin, who represented Merah in cases including driving without a licence, said he seemed to struggle with a sense of alienation after being twice rejected by the French army. He said an 18-month imprisonment for petty crime convictions hardened his outlook but he had not lived a life one might expect of an Islamic fundamentalist. "He liked cars, money, girls," Etelin told reporters. "He did not go to the mosque, was not proselytising and led an existence which was fully modern in appearance, with friends and plenty of outings. He always gave the outward impression, at least, of someone who wanted to live a modern life." RAID commandos had been in a standoff since the early hours of Wednesday with Merah, periodically firing shots or deploying small explosives until mid-morning on Thursday to try and tire out the gunman so he could be captured. Surrounded by some 300 police, Merah had been silent and motionless for 12 hours when the commandos opted to go inside. He had initially fired through his front door when police swooped on his flat on Wednesday morning but later negotiated, promising to give himself up and saying he did not want to die. By late Wednesday evening, he changed tack again, telling negotiators he wanted to die "like a Mujahideen", weapon in hand, and would not go to prison, Molins said. "If it's me (who dies), too bad, I will go to paradise. If it's you, too bad for you," Molins quoted Merah as saying.
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