Fear swept through southwest France yesterday as the country’s leading prosecutor warned that the serial killer responsible for the attack on a Jewish school on Monday was likely to strike again, despite one of the biggest manhunts in French history.
As armed police fanned out across the region, François Molins, the chief prosecutor in Paris, told his compatriots to brace themselves for further attacks by a “extremely determined individual”.
The sense of outrage gripping the country was fuelled by speculation that the gunman could post a video of the shootings on the internet. A government minister said that the killer wore a sophisticated video camera when he shot dead three young children and a teacher in Toulouse.
The disclosure fuelled the anguish that has led many Jewish families to keep their children indoors until investigators track down the so-called motorcycle killer.
“We are afraid,” said Didier Blumenstein, 55, from Toulouse, as he emerged from a ceremony in honour of the three child victims. “This man is dangerous and he could strike again anywhere, any time. We just hope he is caught soon.”
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A few miles away on the other side of the city, four plain coffins were carried from a classroom in Ozar Hatorah secondary school, the scene of the shooting, amid cries of distress from friends and relatives.
They contained the bodies of Jonathan Sandler, 30, a religious teacher, Gabriel and Arieh, his sons aged 4 and 5, and Myriam Monsonego, 7. All have dual French-Israeli nationality and were flown to Jerusalem for burial yesterday.
“You will always be our little angels,” said a drawing left by a child amid flowers and teddy bears outside the gates of the school, which is to re-open this morning.
The investigation was given added urgency when Claude Guéant, the French Interior Minister, suggested that the killer had a camera strapped to his chest during the attack on Ozar Hatorah secondary school.
The equipment — thought to be a GoPro camera of the kind used by hang-gliders and parachutists to film their exploits — was spotted on closed circuit television footage taken by security cameras on the school gates, the minister said.
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Mr Guéant added: “It is an extra piece of evidence on the character of this man, who is cruel enough to record his actions.”
The claim added weight to a theory that the killer could have military training, since GoPros are often used by paratroopers during their jumps, according to French media.
However, Mr Molins said that he could not be certain that the gadget around the killer’s neck was a camera.
The prosecutor described the man as an “extremely determined individual” who was “likely to act again”.
He was thin, tough-looking and about 5ft 8in, and had shot all seven of his victims at close range, he said.
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The gunman used the same gun and Yamaha T-Max 530 motorcycle in the attack on the school and the recent murders of three French paratroopers. Mr Molins said investigators had questioned hundreds of people and were viewing 7,000 hours of CCTV footage.
Amid speculation that the gunman could be either an Islamic radical or an ultra-Right fanatic, he said that no lines of inquiry had been ruled out – implying that police remained interested in three soldiers dismissed from the French army for being neo-Nazi sympathisers in 2008.
Fearing that the killer could be driven out of the southwest of the country by the heavy security operation there, prosecutors made a formal request for police forces throughout France to search for the “dark-grey Yamaha with black rims and radiator grill”.
“Warning. Armed and dangerous individual,” said the message.
The motorcycle, which was stolen in Toulouse on March 6, appeared to be dark-coloured in security camera footage that was taken minutes before Corporal Abel Chenoulf, 24, and Corporal Loic Lieber, 28, of the 17th Parachute Engineering Regiment, were shot dead in Montauban, near Toulouse, last week.
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However, the motorbike seemed light coloured in the CCTV film of the attack on the school, according to Mr Guéant, who suggested that the killer might have painted it white.
Investigators are also seeking to trace the gunman through the internet after discovering that he made contact with his first victim — Chief Sergeant Imad Ibn Ziahen, 30, of the 1st French Parachute Regiment – on an online auction site.
Chief Sergeant Ziahen, who had been seeking to sell his Suzuki 630 Bandit motorbike, was shot at close range.
All French schools observed a minute’s silence for Monday’s victims, but the ceremony was particularly poignant at Gan Rachi Jewish school in Toulouse, where Myriam, Gabriel and Arieh all went.
They had been waiting outside Ozar Hatorah lycée for a lift to the primary school when they were shot.
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Rabbi Mikael Journo, the chairman of the French Association of Rabbis, said that the other pupils at Gan Rachi were “very, very traumatised. You could see it in their eyes.”
As he walked slowly from the school, Mr Blumenstein said that his two-year-old grandson had been kept at home in the wake of the killings. “He should be in nursery school, but as long as the killer is at large we don’t want him going there.”
Agnés Blumenstein, 52, played nervously with a bit of paper, as she struggled to express her feelings. “There are no words,” she said. “All our thoughts are with those children who have disappeared.”