A gunman on a motorbike shot dead at least four people, including three children, at a Jewish school in Toulouse yesterday, just days after three soldiers were killed in similar shootings in the same area of southwest France.
"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," one father, searching for his son at the Ozar Hatorah school, told RTL radio.
The gunman killed a 30-year-old Hebrew teacher, his two children aged three and six, and another child, Toulouse prosecutor Michel Valet said.
A 17-year-old pupil was wounded.
"The attacker was shooting people outside the school, then pursued children into the school before fleeing on a heavy motorbike," Valet told reporters.
The soldiers, one of Caribbean and two of Muslim origin, were also killed in drive-by shootings.
Prosecutors opened an anti-terrorism investigation into all the attacks though it is not known whether the motive was political or purely racist.
President Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande, the Socialist opposing him in his bid for re-election in May, both rushed to the scene.
Sarkozy said: "Everything must be done so that the killer is stopped and has to pay for his crimes."
The prosecutor confirmed that the calibre of the firearm used in yesterday's attack was the same as that of the gun used to kill the three soldiers in two separate attacks by a man who escaped on a scooter.
Valet said investigators were studying video evidence from the school shootings and the attack on Thursday.
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