The suspect in a French killing spree who held police at bay for almost 32 hours in a standoff was shot in the head and killed during a police raid Thursday, a prosecutor says.
Mohamed Merah, 23, was shot during the firefight with an elite French police squad that was attempting to capture him alive in the southwestern city of Toulouse.
Two police officers were injured during the assault.
Prosecutor Francois Molins said Merah came out of the bathroom shooting wildly as officers tried to quietly enter the building around 10:30 a.m. local time.
Merah was hit as he jumped out a window still firing his weapon, Molins said.
"(He) launches an assault, charging police through the apartment and firing at them with a Colt .45, continuing to advance, armed and firing, as he jumps from the balcony," he said.
Merah was wanted in the deaths of three paratroopers, three Jewish school children and a rabbi, all killed since March 11 in what he told police was an attempt to "bring France to its knees."
Police reviewed videos Merah allegedly had taken of the killings that he carried out in three separate attacks from a motorcycle.
In the first murder of a paratrooper on March 11, he is heard on the video as saying, "You kill my brothers; I kill you."
Two other paratroopers were killed four days later in the nearby town of Montauban where Merah is heard to cry out, "Allahu Akbar" or "God is great" in Arabic, police said.
During the standoff, Merah told negotiators he killed the seven to avenge the deaths of Palestinian children and to protest the French army's involvement in Afghanistan, as well as a government ban last year on face-covering Islamic veils, police said.
Authorities said Merah, a French citizen of Algerian descent, is part of a radical form of Islam and had been to Afghanistan and the Pakistani militant stronghold of Waziristan, where he claimed to have received training from al Qaeda.
The murders are believed to be the first killings inspired by Islamic radical motives in France in more than a decade.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Thursday authorities are investigating whether Merah had accomplices.
Merah's mother and a brother were held a day ago by police after the mother's computer became a critical link in tracking Merah down. The brother, Abdelkader, had already been linked to Iraqi Islamist networks.
Sarkozy said anyone who regularly visits websites that support terrorism, hate or violence will be punished under French law, while also promising a crackdown on those who go abroad "for the purposes of indoctrination in terrorist ideology."
Elite police squads set off sporadic blasts throughout the night in what officials described as a tactic aimed to pressure Merah to surrender.
On Wednesday, Merah appeared to toy with police negotiators - first saying he would surrender in the afternoon, then under the cover of darkness, then reneging on those pledges altogether, officials said.
French authorities - like others across Europe - have long been concerned about "lone-wolf" attacks by young, Internet-savvy militants who find radical beliefs online, since they are harder to find and track.
Even before Merah's death, the lawyer who had defended him for years on a series of criminal charges predicted the standoff would come to a sombre end.
"He wants to show he is exceptional, omnipotent, and this approach can only end up as something tragic," Christian Etelin said on news channel i-Tele on Thursday.
He said Merah had tried to join the military but was rejected and he was also disillusioned after a string of convictions for petty crimes.
Police said the suspect had plans to kill another soldier.
