French hunt school killer as victims flown to Israel

An El Al plane left Paris for Israel early Wednesday, with the bodies of three Jewish children and a rabbi gunned down in southern France, amid fears that a suspected serial killer will strike again.

The plane also flew French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe to Tel Aviv along with 50 relatives and friends of the victims who were shot dead in a cold-blooded attack at a Toulouse school on Monday and will be buried in Israel.

The Israeli flag-carrier plane was expected to land in Tel Aviv at 5:35 am (0335 GMT), an airport source said, confirming that it had taken off from Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport shortly after midnight (2330 GMT Tuesday).

Jonathan Sandler, a 30-year-old Frenchman, his two sons Arieh, 5, and Gabriel, 4 as well as seven-year-old Myriam Monsonego will be buried later Wednesday morning at the Givat Shaul cemetery in Jerusalem, according to the Israeli embassy in France.

President Nicolas Sarkozy paid silent homage to the victims Tuesday at a school in Paris close to the city's Holocaust memorial, and afterwards admitted that authorities had as yet no clue as to the identity of the killer.

"Anti-Semitism is obvious. The Jewish school attack was an anti-Semitic crime," Sarkozy told reporters at the Paris school after meeting children.

French investigators fear the same gunman also killed three soldiers in two recent separate attacks and may strike again.

The soldiers were French citizens of North African origin, while another who was critically wounded in the attack was black and from the French West Indies.

The bodies of the four victims of the Toulouse rampage were first flown to Paris from southern France with their families on Tuesday.

Sarkozy and Prime Minister Francois Fillon paid their respects to the bodies as they lay in Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport.

The region around Toulouse was placed on maximum alert amid fears the gunman will strike again.

Francois Molins, who as chief Paris prosecutor oversees counter-terrorism investigations, said the unidentified gunman knows that he is being hunted and warned that he is "likely to act again."

"All the dead victims received a bullet wound fired at point blank range at the level of the head," Molins said, explaining that powder burns showed the muzzle of the gun was touching the victims.

Meanwhile, police were scouring the Internet in search of potentially grim footage after witnesses said the gunman was wearing a video camera when he murdered the Jewish school children in the southern city of Toulouse.

News that the mystery serial killer may have recorded his crimes came as France was struggling to come to terms with the tragedy.

Students across the country joined public employees and lawmakers to observe a minute of silence for the victims of the latest attack.

Molins said police believe the scooter-riding gunman was responsible for the murder of an off-duty paratrooper on March 11, of two of his comrades on Thursday and of a rabbi and three Jewish children in Monday's school attack.

Officials have said the same gun and make of scooter was used in all three attacks, and noted that the attacks were carried out at precise four-day intervals.

Molins said the attacks had been classified as terrorism because they "gravely disturbed public order by intimidation or terror," and that the killings could be "racist and anti-Semitic but still also terrorist."

With apparently few clues to go on, police were downplaying reports that three soldiers recently sacked for expressing neo-Nazi views were suspects.

French authorities stepped up security at Jewish and Muslim schools, and Sarkozy has declared a maximum "scarlet" terror alert for the Midi-Pyrenees region.

With a month to go before the first round of polling, campaigning in France's presidential election was disrupted, with both the right-wing incumbent and main Socialist rival Francois Hollande curtailing their schedule.

Italy's education ministry also said a minute of silence in honour of the victims would be held in Italian schools at 1000 GMT on Wednesday.

A ceremony will be held later Wednesday in army barracks at Montauban, near Toulouse, to pay homage to the two paratroopers from the 17th Parachute Engineering Regiment (17e RGP) and one member of the first paras who were killed earlier this month.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/french-shooting-victims-bodies-flown-israel-010712102.html

sheryl sandberg superbowl recipes super bowl kick off chili recipes carlos condit diaz vs condit super bowl 2012 kickoff time