Members of a bereaved family leave the 'Ozar Hatorah' Jewish school, in Toulouse, France: photo – EPA/Eric Cabanis
“In connection with the attack […] the Ministry of Foreign Affairs shares the grief of the victims’ families and the Jewish community in France,” a statement by Poland’s Foreign Minister, Radek Sikorski, says.
Minister Sikorski emphasized that such “terrorist acts” are never justified under any circumstances and must meet with “unequivocal condemnation by the civilized world”.
The victims have been named as Israeli Rabbi Yonatan Sandler, his two sons Aryeh and Gavriel, and eight-year-old Miriam Monsonego, the daughter of the school's headteacher, Yaacov Monsonego.
French media are reporting that police in the city of Toulouse, in the south of the country, are searching for a man who burst into the Ozar Hatorah school and shot children aged three, six and ten and a 30 year-old teacher before making his getaway on aa stolen Yamaha 500CC T-MAX, police say.
“He shot at everything he could see, children and adults, and some children were chased into the school," prosecutor Michel Valet told the AFP news agency.
The attack comes just days after two previous shootings in the region by a man on a motorbike who killed three soldiers.
"We are struck by the similarities between the modus operandi of today's drama and those last week, even if we have to wait to have more evidence from the police to confirm this hypothesis," President Nicholas Sarkozy said as he visited the site of the murders. (pg)