Three children amongst the dead. The adult who died was a rabbi.
updated: four confirmed dead now++++++
Toulouse shooting: four killed outside Jewish schoolA gunman opened fire in front of a Jewish school in the south-west French city of Toulouse on Monday, killing four people including a father and his two sons, and another child.
The adult victim was thought to be a rabbi who taught at the school, who died with his three-year-old and six-year-old sons. The fourth victim, aged between eight and 10 years old, was the school principal's daughter, according to Rahamim Sabag, a rabbi who works at the school. Sabag was speaking to Israel's Channel 2 television.
Witnesses described how the gunman opened fire outside the Ozar Hatorah school, a private Jewish secondary, at around 8.15am before fleeing on a black scooter.
"I saw two people dead in front of the school, an adult and a child ... Inside, it was a vision of horror, the bodies of two small children," a distraught father whose child attends the school told RTL radio.
"I did not find my son, apparently he fled when he saw what happened. How can they attack something as sacred as a school?"
President Nicolas Sarkozy called the shootings an "abominable drama" and a "frightening tragedy".
Sarkozy, currently on the election trail, cancelled other appointments and was expected to visit the school on Monday morning.
It was not immediately clear whether police were linking the attack to a series of "ride-by" shootings of soldiers in the area last week, in which three paratroopers were killed in two incidents by a gunman who made a getaway on a motorbike.
However, the interior minister Claude Guéant said there were "similarities" between the attack at the school and on the soldiers. The soldiers shot last week were of North African origin and Caribbean origin.
Luc Escodat, of the police union Alliance, told iTele TV that one of the two weapons used in the school shooting was similar to that used in last week's attacks on soldiers.
The three members of a parachute regiment were shot in the busy town centre of Montauban, 46km (28 miles) south of Toulouse, on Thursday afternoon. Two died on the spot, while the third was in a critical condition in hospital.
The previous Sunday in a suburb of Toulouse, an off-duty member of another regiment was shot in the head at point blank range by a gunman on a scooter. Imad Ibn-Ziaten, 30, a marshall in the 1st Parachute Regiment, was standing next to his Suzuki 650cc motorbike outside a gym and had been wearing his helmet at the time; he was not in uniform.
The police are still hunting for the motorbike gunman thought to be behind last week's attacks on the soldiers. Media reports said the suspect had a tattoo or scar on his left cheek.
French media reported that security was being tightened at all Jewish schools in the country.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/19/toulouse-shooting-three-killed-jewish-school
Topic: Four killed after shooting at Jewish school in France