It's been a long night as elite French police from the Raid squad keep Mohamed Merah cornered inside a Toulouse flat. Here is a recap of the main developments.

• Mohamed Merah, 24, has been pinned down since Wednesday morning in a Toulouse flat after a raid in which police captured his brother but had to pull back when three officers were shot and wounded. The scene is completely surrounded by heavily armed police from Raid, the French specialist anti-terrorist and hostage response squad.

• Explosions have been ringing out at varied intervals overnight, with the stated aim of authorities being to intimidate Merah, tire him out and convince him that there is no escape, while putting themselves and others in as little danger as possible.

• At over 24 hours it has become one of France's longest ever police sieges – comparisons have been drawn with the Neuilly hostage crisis of 1933, which went on for 46 hours.

• Merah is blamed for the shooting murders of three schoolchildren and a rabbi at a Jewish school in Toulouse, and for gunning down three soldiers in Toulouse and nearby Montauban. He has called himself an al-Qaida fighter and declared he would have killed more people given the chance.

It's turned into a game of count-the-explosions for the reporters at the scene as the Raid squad according to Le Monde "methodically pursues its strategy by multiplying the shots, varying them in strength, and far between". Here's what Soren Seelow of Le Monde has just tweeted (our translation: "It is reported four explosions, including one accompanied by a burst of light"):

#Toulouse It is reported four explosions, including one accompanied by a burst of light. — Soren Seelow (@soren_seelow) March 22, 2012

Amaury de Hauteclocque – officer in charge of Raid, the French elite police unit that is keeping Mohamed Merah pinned down – wrote a history of the squad in 2007, according to Le Monde:

Hauteclocque ... writes in a book published in 2007, Histoires du Raid [Stories of the Raid], about the "subtle exercise" of negotiating. He explains that negotiation and the ability to solve a crisis without firing a shot is a "trademark" for which Raid has become known and respected since its inception more than 25 years ago.

The French defence minister, Gerard Longuet, has told France TF1 television:

What we want is to capture him alive, so that we can bring him to justice, know his motivations and hopefully find out who were his accomplices, if there were any.

Le Monde points out that this is one of France's longest ever siege situations involving a gunman or hostage-taker and police.



On 15 May 1993, after two days of negotiations, police stormed a kindergarten in Neuilly (Hauts de Seine) where children and a teacher had been held hostage for 46 hours by a former soldier, Erick Schmitt, who called himself "the Human Bomb". He was killed in the attack – there were no casualties among the hostages.

The Mera case may have produced a bounce in the polls for Nicolas Sarkozy as presidential elections approach. Reuters has this:

The first opinion poll since a gunman shot dead four people at a Jewish school on Monday showed President Nicolas Sarkozy would narrowly beat his Socialist challenger in the first round of a presidential election next month. Sarkozy and Francois Hollande suspended their campaigns after three children and a rabbi were shot dead at the school in Toulouse in south-west France, killings that followed the shooting of three soldiers earlier this month. A CSA poll conducted on Monday and Tuesday showed Sarkozy would win 30% in the first round and Hollande 28%, whereas the two rivals had been neck-and-neck a week ago. Despite Sarkozy's lead in the first round, the poll showed that Hollande was still ahead by eight percentage points in a second-round run-off on 6 May, unchanged from a week ago. While Hollande has so far enjoyed a large lead over Sarkozy whose economic record and showy style left many voters dissatisfied, Sarkozy's response to Monday's shootings has improved his image.

#Toulouse Encore une grosse détonation. — Soren Seelow (@soren_seelow) March 22, 2012

Soren Seelaw, a journalist from Le Monde, who we mentioned earlier, has been live-tweeting the blasts

Le Figaro is reporting that a journalist at the scene has heard two more shots from inside the house. Other reports are now coming through of a loud bang at the building.

According to Reuters reporter John Irish, quoted just now by the BBC:



Around 2.30 there was an exchange of fire. It wasn't very long, I think two shots on each side, and then about 20 minutes ago and that was even less. That was I think one shot.

There are various reports of more loud bangs outside Mohamed Merah's hideout.

France3 on its live blog says:

Just heard two shots, according to journalists present on site.

... while Le Monde reports:



The special correspondent of [TV station] BFM announces that a new big bang has been heard.

There's a denial of earlier claims that Mohamed Merah did jail time in Afghanistan. Here's the latest from Reuters:

French school shooting suspect Mohamed Merah was not jailed in Afghanistan in 2007, his lawyer and an Afghan provincial official have said. Earlier, Kandahar prison chief Ghulam Faruq had told Reuters that Afghan security forces detained Merah on 19 December 2007, and that he was sentenced to three years in jail for planting bombs in the southern province of Kandahar, the Taliban's birthplace. But the Kandahar governor's office said that account was "baseless", citing judicial records. "Security forces in Kandahar have never detained a French citizen named Mohamed Merah," said the governor's spokesman, Ahmad Jawed Faisal. Merah's lawyer in France, Christian Etelin, said his client was in prison in France from December 2007 until September 2009 serving a sentence for robbery with violence and therefore could not have been in Afghanistan at the time.

Here's the front page from Friday's edition of Le Figaro, headlined: "Mohamed Merah. 23 years, terrorist, Islamist. 7 dead."

The editorial beneath is headlined: "The reality principle."

Le Parisien's front page is headlined: "Journey of a killer."

Sud Ouest's splash headline reflects the fact that there appears to be no escape for Merah, declaring simply that he has been "Neutralised".

All these papers use a screen grab of a smiling Merah from the video here that shows him sliding a silver BMW around in the dirt on some vacant land.

The Swedish website Aftonbladet is showing a live stream of the scene on the street near Merah's house. At time of writing we're seeing two officers in flourescent vests walking back and forth – no doubt they are in place to stop anyone entering the exclusion zone.

If you keep the volume up you can hear journalists doing live crosses to their newsrooms with the latest from the scene.

Bear in mind this isn't our live stream – we can't verify it, and it might not be visible in your country or could give up at any moment. And, of course, the website itself is in Swedish.

France3 is quoting reporters at the scene as saying police have blown a hole in the wall of the apartment and Merah is holed up in another room. It seems this is not a new explosion, but possibly one of the blasts heard earlier.

It's been 24 hours now since police raided Mohamed Merah's house in a pre-dawn swoop that stunned local people. The specialist officers were beaten back by gunfire and three of them were wounded.

They did manage to arrest Merah's brother, who remains in custody. There has been an armed stand-off at the house ever since, with Merah variously declaring his allegiance to al-Qaida, offering to surrender but then recanting, and boasting that he would have killed more people if given the chance.

French media sources including Le Monde and France3 are quoting interior ministry sources as saying the police strategy is a "war of attrition" against Merah – in other words they are waiting for him to tire out or let his guard slip so they can move in.

According to France's Le Monde and BFM TV, a police source has suggested there is no contact at the moment between the officers on the scene and Mohamed Merah.

Our news team have just updated our main story on the situation in Toulouse.

This is Warren Murray taking over from Barry Neild on our live blog of the Toulouse siege involving gunman Mohamed Merah.

France24 has quoted AFP as saying that security forces with bulletproof vests have been taking positions around the building where Mohamed Merah remains holed up.

#Toulouse En quelques minutes, on a entendu trois petites détonations et une plus forte — Soren Seelow (@soren_seelow) March 22, 2012



A reporter from France's Le Monde newspaper has tweeted of more explosions at the scene. He says there have been three small blasts followed by a powerful detonation.

Several gunshots have been heard in the area around the besieged apartment, according to France 3.

Here's a quick recap of the developments this evening in Toulouse:

• Police have set off three loud explosions outside an apartment block in Toulouse where the main suspect in the killings of three soldiers and four civilians has been holed up.

• France's interior ministry denied reports a raid was underway and said the blasts were meant to intimidate Mohamed Merah after he backtracked on earlier promises to turn himself in.

• Street lighting has been blacked out in the neighbourhood around the siege as the standoff enters its second day. Power has also been cut to the apartment.

• Merah has claimed allegiance to al-Qaida. He told prosecutors he had been plotting to kill again and regretted "not having more time to kill more people" since the start of the shooting spree on 11 March. He boasted he had "brought France to its knees".

Another report indicating that police have yet to raid the suspected gunman's apartment comes from AP, quoting Michel Valet, the Toulouse prosecutor.

"I cannot confirm that the assault has started. It's not as simple as that. We are waiting."

Here's the latest from Reuters, backtracking further from the earlier report that an assault had been launched:

Three blasts at the building were the suspect in seven shootings in southwest France is holed up were intended to intimidate him and there has not been an assault to get him out of his apartment, the interior ministry said on Thursday.

"They were moves to intimidate the gunman who seems to have changed his mind and does not want to surrender," ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet told Reuters. "There is no assault."

A police source and a deputy Toulouse mayor had said earlier that an assault had started after three loud blasts had been heard at the building following a more than 20-hour standoff.

Police have been trying to get 24-year-old Mohamed Merah to turn himself over after he fired through the door at them while they tried to storm his apartment in the suburbs of Toulouse in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

Reuters is now quoting the French interior minister saying that a raid has not been launched on Mohamed Merah's apartment. He said the three explosions were meant to intimidate the suspect. This contradicts earlier reports quoting the deputy mayor of Toulouse saying an assault had begun.

Several French news outlets are quoting police sources saying that authorities have not yet launched an assault on the school shooting suspect, but were putting pressure on him after he U-turned on an earlier decision to turn himself in.

"He said he wanted to give himself up. He changed his mind, so we're stepping up on the pressure on him to surrender," two sources told France 3.

France 3 TV's Fabrice Valéry has tweeted that police have entered the suspected gunman's apartment.

The Guardian's Angelique Chrisafis, in Toulouse, says the the French rolling news channel iTele has quoted interior ministry sources that Merah could have changed his mind about surrendering. Merah had said earlier that he would hand himself over in the afternoon, and then in the evening, but neither had happened.

The explosions blew open the door of the apartment where the suspected gunman has been holed up since the early hours of the morning, a police source has told Reuters. "I confirm that the assault has started," he said.

Jean-Pierre Havrin, the deputy mayor of Toulouse, confirmed that negotiations had ended and the assault had begun.

Toulouse's deputy mayor has confirmed that an assault has begun on the suspect's apartment, Reuters reports. It is not immediately clear whether the explosions are as a result of the police action or a response from the suspect.

Reuters is reporting that three blasts have been heard in Toulouse at the site where the suspected gunman is holed up.

France 2 TV has broadcast amateur footage purportedly showing the suspected gunman, Mohamed Merah, at the wheel of a car.

In it, he drives a silver BMW at speed around a patch of dirt, kicking up a cloud of dust. He then slams on the brakes, jumps out of the vehicle, smiling and gesturing to the camera. If confirmed, the video, said to have been shot about 18 months ago, will be the first known images of Merah circulated to the media.

Here's a Guardian video wrap up of the day's events, showing images from the scene in Toulouse and the ceremony attended earlier by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

More from Angelique Chrisafis, in Toulouse. She's provided some strong analysis of the way in which the shootings are likely to transform the French election campaign as it enters its final weeks. Despite appeals from religious leaders to avoid using the seven murders for political gain, the politicking has begun in earnest, she says.

First came Marine Le Pen, of the extreme-right Front National, who has campaigned on the dangers of unfettered immigration and unlabelled halal meat. She seized on the shootings to warn that the "risk of fundamentalism" had been underestimated in France and that "politico-religious groups" had been developing in a lax state. She proposed a referendum on bringing back the death-penalty. Le Pen is currently third in the presidential race, at 15%. The centrist François Bayrou immediately accused the far right of "surfing" on the situation, warning of a fragmented France weakened by politicians deliberately stoking emotions. François Hollande, the Socialist front-runner, said he hoped an arrest would be swift to end France's unbearable anguish.

But the full political spotlight fell on Nicolas Sarkozy, for whom things could go either way. Polls have consistently predicted he may lose the final round run-off to Hollande. If it emerges that the suspect was known to the police, there may be outrage that he was not caught after his first two attacks, leaving him free to strike against Jewish schoolchildren – France's first ever school shooting.The president knows he must walk a delicate line and not be perceived to be twisting the situation for his own gain. His entourage is aware of the disaster for the Spanish right in 2004 when José María Aznar's government blamed Basque militants for the Islamist Madrid train bombings. Days later, Aznar lost the elections to the Socialists.

Read the full article here.

Fabrice Valery, an editor at France 3 TV, has tweeted a photo of what appears to be the darkened streets around the site of the siege. The image shows a line of TV cameras facing three police officers. Behind them, the street appears to be in blackout.

We've just published an excellent round up of the story so far from the Guardian's Angelique Chrisafis in Toulouse. In it she explores the suspect's background and describes the tense scene as police try to avoid further bloodshed in bringing the siege to an end.

Sky News is reporting that street lighting has been switched of in the area of Toulouse where the siege is taking place.

Reporting on the prospect of a surrender in the next few hours, AP quotes a France-2 TV interview with the interior minister, Claude Guéant, who says Merah plans to turn himself in at night "to be more discreet".

Barack Obama has called Nicolas Sarkozy to talk about the attacks, according to Le Figaro's live blog. French officials said the US president praised French police and asked Sarkozy to pass on condolences to victims' families in a conversation that underscored French-US unity in standing against terrorism.

There has been more political fallout from the killings in the wake of comments from far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen. Le Pen has broken a campaign truce to say that one of the attacks, on a Jewish school, showed it was time to "wage war" on Islamist groups.

Reuters reports that Le Pen, currently third place in opinion polls, shunned calls for national unity to use the killings as a means of criticising government "laxity" that had allowed Islamist militants to flourish in France. The comments triggered a backlash.

"It is time to wage war on these fundamentalist political religious groups who are killing our children," Le Pen said on TV news channel i)tele.

"The fundamentalist threat has been underestimated."

Le Pen went on to say that she would seek a debate about restoring the death penalty, abolished 30 years ago in France under the late Socialist President Francois Mitterrand.

While conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy and his main rival, Socialist Francois Hollande, suspended campaigning after Monday's school shooting, Le Pen's comments drew angry responses from several other outsider candidates in the election race. Francois Bayrou, a popular centrist who is fourth-ranked in the polls, said she had overstepped the mark.



"The extreme right is trying to exploit this situation," he said. "Nobody has the right to let the political debate run off the rails." Hard leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon, who has been waging a war of words with Le Pen for weeks and has branded her "semi-demented", warned in a statement against political exploitation of the shootings to stoke hatred. "Our first duty from this point is to prevent this situation being used as a pretext to promote hateful approximations and stigmatisation," he said.

A little more background via AFP on the suspected gunman's attempts to join the French military. The news agency reports that Merah "twice tried and failed to join the French army".

It quotes the country's defence ministry saying that Merah first tried to enlist at the age of 19 in the northern city of Lille in January 2008.



"He passed all the tests but the inquiry into his criminal record decided to reject his application," Colonel Bruno Lafitte told AFP.



He then tried to join the Foreign Legion in Toulouse in 2010, it reported. Lafitte told AFP that Merah has spent the night at a recruitment centre but left the following day.

France's Le Nouvel Observateur news magazine has some interesting analysis looking at how the drama in Toulouse may provide a boost to Nicolas Sarkozy ahead of the elections. Commentator Gaël Sliman remarks that, prior to the killings, security had been a background issue. Since it is now likely to be pushed to the fore, this will favour Sarkozy, who is seen as stronger on security than his rival François Hollande.

Le Figaro also reports Molins saying that the suspected gunman has talked about a possible surrender later tonight. The prosecutor said Merah had boasted about bringing France "to its knees".

More from the prosecutor via Le Figaro's live blog: Authorities have recovered the Yamaha TMax scooter used in the assassinations after receiving directions from the gunman. Merah has also claimed he has stashed automatic weapons and handguns in two two vehicles, a Renault Megane and a Clio.

Merah, the suspected gunman, has claimed responsibility for the killings of the three soldiers last week and the four Jewish victims of the school attack on Monday, according to Molins.

The French prosecutor, Francois Molins, has been giving more information on Merah. He told a press conference the suspect in the shooting attacks had been to Afghanistan twice and trained in Pakistan's Waziristan, a militant stronghold. He said Merah's brother had been implicated in a network that sent militant fighters to Iraq.

The French interior minister, Claude Gueant, said Merah had told police he belonged to al-Qaida and wanted to take revenge for the deaths of Palestinian children. Gueant said Merah was also angry against French military intervention overseas.

French authorities are expecting the Toulouse siege to carry on into the evening.

Le Figaro's live blog has more on Merah allegedly preparing this morning to kill again (see 2.50pm). It says he told investigators he had decided to kill a soldier in Toulouse and had already idenitified his target.

Sarkozy has just spoken at a service for the three soldiers shot dead last week. He said the gunman had attacked the French army, whose members, regardless of their colour or creed, protect the values and people of a single French republic.

The French soldier knows he can die so France's values can survive, the French soldier knows the meaning of the words duty and sacrifice and knows how to look death in the face. The death they faced was not the one they were expecting in the battlefield, they were executed by a terrorist. Today we know the assassin was targeting soldiers. They were killed because they were French soldiers, they worked for the French army. It was the French army the terrorist was attacking

• Anti-terror police are continuing to surround a block of flats in Toulouse where the main suspect in the murders of three soldiers and four civilians is holed up

• The suspect, named as Mohamed Merah, is reported to have travelled to fight in Afghanistan and to have been jailed there before escaping in 2008

• The French government has confirmed that Merah had been under surveillance by the security services, but say he did nothing to suggest he was "preparing criminal activity"

• Despite giving up a handgun, Merah is understood still to possess at least two machine guns. Police say explosives have been found in his brother's car

• Merah's family has been taken into "precautionary custody"

• President Sarkozy has appealed for unity, saying: "We must give in neither to discrimination nor revenge".

• The funerals of the four Jewish victims of the attacks have taken place in Jerusalem today and Sarkozy is attending a memorial service for the dead soldiers

The local representative of the Jewish umbrella group the Crif, Nicole Yardeni, said Nicolas Sarkozy had told her and Muslim leaders that Merah was readying himself to kill again this morning when police intervened.

Intriguing tweet from the media and information office of the governor of Kandahar:

Security Forces in Kandahar have never detained a French citizen named Mohammad Merah."

Are they suggesting they have arrested someone of that name - but not of that nationality?

It seems that Sarkozy has had to leave the police station he was visiting in Toulouse to attend the service for the murdered soldiers in Montauban.

I think the headline on the BFMTV website sums things up rather well:



Toulouse: des informations contradictoires sur l'arrestation

Reuters now have Guéant denying the arrest, too. The lines of communication appear to be a little tangled at the scene.

Sarkozy has now arrived at a police station nearby where the people evacuated from the block are being looked after and from where the siege is being directed.

Sarkozy is no stranger to sieges: he personally negotiated the freeing of several children during a school siege in Neuilly in 1993, when 21 children were taken hostage. The hostage taker was eventually shot and killed by the police.

A police source has told Le Figaro that Merah has not been arrested and that negotiations are still under way.

Police are now saying that explosives were found in Merah's brother's car.

Guéant, however, is apparently denying any arrest ...

There's some speculation that Sarkozy himself will announce Merah's arrest as he's getting very near the scene. The election is just weeks away.

Reuters notes both BFMTV and i-Tele are reporting that Merah has been arrested after a standoff lasting nearly 12 hours.

One police source who is not directly linked to the investigation confirmed the arrest to Reuters, but several other sources said they were not aware of it.

The TV channels cited police sources for the information, without providing further details. It was not immediately possible to confirm this.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is expected to speak to the nation this afternoon.

Breaking news: BFMTV are reporting that Merah has been arrested ...

Angelique Chrisafis has been talking to people near the scene of the standoff in Toulouse. She has sent this dispatch:

On the streets near the apartment block under siege, several young men gathered who claimed they knew the suspect from Les Izards, a mixed neighbourhood of Toulouse where he had grown up. A 25-year-old French man, whose parents were born in Algeria, said: "I grew up with him. I'm totally shocked and surprised, I can't believe that he could do this. His mum was French of Algerian origin — she brought him up alone. He didn't have a dad. This has absolutely nothing to do with Islam, or with us, and I really hope that all the young people of our type of neighbourhood won't be sullied by this. It has always been hard enough living in France with prejudice but now it's going to be much worse." Another man who said he was 24 and a warehouse worker, but did not give his name, said he knew the family, in particular the suspect's brother. He said: "I came down here because I wanted to see what was going on. I heard someone at work listening to the news say this morning, 'It's an Arab, It's an Arab' … He was the kind of kid who got into trouble, but he was a banal young guy. Over the past two years he had changed a lot. He wasn't into having fun, he became harder. He didn't really go to the mosque, he seemed more likely to meet people in obscure flats." Many said they didn't know the suspect had moved to the Côte Pavée neighbourhood where the raid was taking place. The father of one resident in the block of flats said he had moved in at around the same time as his son about a year ago, and had helped him move a sofa but that he didn't know him well. One woman said: "I knew his family and his mother, his father had died. There was nothing to suggest he would have acted like this. The North African community is doubly hit, first by the grief for the victims and what happened, and also that we're from the Magreb and people will be pointing fingers at us. I appeal to the French, don't mix up the whole community with what has happened. Never never has Islam said to kill people."

Merah has resumed talks with the police and appears very keen to try to explain himself.

His lawyer, meanwhile, says Merah was due to serve a month in prison for his driving offence, and was due up in court again in April.

A police official has told AP that officers will storm the flats unless Merah gives himself up as promised.

Cedric Delage, regional secretary for a police union, said the suspect has promised to turn himself into police by 2:30 pm (1330GMT).

Delage says if that doesn't happen, police will force their way in to try to take him by force. Hundreds of riot police are surrounding the building

A little more on that Reuters line (below) on Merah trying to join the army: according to BFMTV, he applied to join the French Foreign Legion in 2010 ...

Details of Merah's apparently normal life are beginning to emerge as reporters descend on his friends and neighbours.

Cedric Lambert, 46, father of an upstairs neighbour, said Merah was friendly and had helped them about 10 months ago to carry a heavy sofa upstairs.

"He was extremely normal," Lambert said.

A group of four 24-year-old men who said they were friends of Merah tried to go to his apartment block on Wednesday to persuade him to surrender but were stopped at a police roadblock.

All told a Reuters reporter he had never talked to them about religion and they had no idea he had been to Afghanistan.

One friend who gave his name as Kamal, a financial adviser at La Banque Postale, said he had known Merah at school and they had done soccer training together after meeting again two years ago. He said:

He is someone who is very discreet. He is not someone who would brag and go around and say 'Oh look at my new girlfriend, look how great I am.' He is very polite and always well-behaved. "He never spoke about Islam but he did pray. But we all pray five times a day. There's nothing strange about that."

Another friend of Moroccan origin said Merah had tried to enlist in the French army but had been rejected. He said he had seen Merah in a city centre nightclub just last week.

Merah did not drink "but I don't think he is any more religious than I am. I think he has just lost the plot," Danny Dem said.

A third contemporary, who declined to give his name, said he went to primary school with Merah and they had remained friends.

"He likes football and motor-bikes like any other guy his age," said the man, dressed in a blue French national soccer shirt. "I didn't even know he prayed."

Guéant says Merah has "explained a lot about his itinerary" to police negotiators, adding: "His radicalisation took place in a salafist ideological group and seems to have been firmed up by two journeys he made to Afghanistan and Pakistan."

Reuters is also quoting a security source who says Afghan intelligence officials passed details of Merah's identity to their French counterparts following his arrest in 2007.

Le Figaro reports that the crucial break in the manhunt seems to have come from a Yamaha dealer in Toulouse who remembered a young man asking how to disable the anti-theft GPS tracker on his T-Max scooter.

Christian Dellacherie, the proprietor of Yamaha Yam31, told the paper:



The police were asking for precise details on the model of scooter used and the colour. It wasn't until Tuesday morning after the murders at the Toulouse school that one particular fact popped back into our memories - a client who was repainting his scooter had asked an employee in the workshop how to deactivate the tracker. We'd had that information for about a week, but it was only when the colour of the scooter changed between [the] Montauban [attacks] and [the] Toulouse [attacks] that it became an important factor."

Christian Etelin, a lawyer who represented Merah in court in Toulouse on 24 February for driving without a license, has told French BFMTV that Merah knew he was under surveillance since returning from Afghanistan, but was "extremely discreet about his political views".

Etelin described Merah as "by no means rigid or fanatical", and said he could never imagine him committing crimes of such "hardness and extremity … If you could say anything, it was that he was polite and courteous … quite sweet actually."

He also said Merah's mother — and his elder sister, to whom he was close — despaired of him somewhat.

He said Merah had been imprisoned at 18 for bag snatching in the entrance hall of a bank in 2005. Even so, he added, Merah was not someone who you could call violent.

Unlike a lot of others who grew up alongside him in that area in the north of the city, he was not involved in drugs. His thing was petty theft … As for political or religious beliefs, he was very discreet. He never said anything that might lead one to believe he had these views."

The lawyer said he was ready to try to talk to him but added that he feared the situation would end with Merah's death — either by his own hand of at those of the police.

Emma Graham-Harrison has more on the Afghan angle:

Jawed Faisal, a spokesman for the Kandahar provincial governor, said:

I can't confirm it was the same person but there was someone in Kandahar prison with the name Mohamed Merah, who was famous as 'the French guy'. His father and grandfather had Afghan names, and he could pass as an Afghan. His father's name was Mohammad Seddiq, grandfather was Mohammad Shah. "His crime was that he was captured laying IEDs, and he was sentenced to three years in jail, but only served five months of it when the prison break happened and he escaped. "We don't know which part of Kandahar province he was caught in."

Faisal added that he didn't know how long Merah had been in Afghanistan or how long he stayed after prison break. Lt Col Jimmie Cummings, a spokesman for the Nato-led coalition, said he was aware of reports that Merah had been held in an Afghan prison, but refered all questions to Afghan officials.

Time for a quick recap of what's happened in Toulouse and elsewhere today:

• Counter-terror police have surrounded a block of flats in Toulouse where the main suspect in the murders of three soldiers and four civilians is holed up

• The suspect, named as Mohamed Merah, is reported to have travelled to fight in Afghanistan and to have been jailed there before escaping in 2008

• The French government has confirmed Merah had been under surveillance by the security services

• Despite giving up a handgun, Merah is understood still to possess at least two machine guns

• Merah's family has been taken into "precautionary custody"

• President Sarkozy has appealed for unity, saying: "We must give in neither to discrimination nor revenge".

• The funerals of the four Jewish victims of the attacks has taken place in Jerusalem today.

Here's a bit of our report on the Afghan prison break in June 2008 during which Merah is alleged to have escaped:

Up to 1,000 prisoners, including 400 Taliban militants, were on the run in Kandahar last night after a dramatic Taliban assault on the southern Afghan city's main prison. The militants blew the prison gates open with a massive truck bomb and flooded inside, attacking the guards and freeing the inmates. A jubilant Taliban spokesman said the group had deployed 30 motorcycle mounted attackers and two suicide bombers.

Claude Guéant, the French interior minister, says it seems that Merah was a petty criminal who was radicalised by an extremist group in Toulouse before travelling to Pakistan and Afghanistan.

But, Le Monde reports, Guéant is insistent that during the time Merah was monitored by the French security services, "nothing ever arose to suggest that he was preparing criminal activity".

Reuters are firming up the picture on Merah's apparent time in Afghanistan. According to the Kandahar prison director, Merah was detained by security services on 19 December 2007 and was sentenced to three years in jail for planting bombs in Kandahar province, the Taliban's birthplace.

Le Monde's reports would seem to suggest that Merah visited Pakistan and Afghanistan — where he was picked up by Afghan police — despite having already been detained and imprisoned in the latter country ...

Details of the suspect's time in Afghanistan are still sketchy, but Le Monde is reporting that he went twice to Pakistan, once in 2010 and again 2011, to speak with groups of fighters based in the tribal regions near the border with Afghanistan. The paper claims that he trained in the camps there alongside the Pakistani Taliban, foreign jihadis and members of the Haqqani network — and that he even crossed the border into Afghanistan as part of groups sent to fight Nato troops.

It says he is understood to have stopped off in Waziristan before heading to Kandahar and Zabul in the south of Afghanistan. Interestingly, it also says that he was stopped by police on the outskirts of Kandahar city. Although he was not arrested, his presence in the region as a foreign national was unusual enough for the police to report him to the Afghan intelligence services, who reportedly then passed on the information to western intelligence services.

It's unclear how Le Monde's claims tally with those of the director of Kandahar prison.

According to the Kandahar prison director, the suspect escaped in 2008 during an insurgent attack on the jail.

The director of Kandahar prison in Afghanistan has identified the suspect as Mohamed Merah — a name that has also been given to AFP by a source close to the Toulouse investigation.

The prison director, Ghulam Faruq, has told Reuters that the man was arrested for planting bombs in Kandahar and sentenced to three years' imprisonment before he escaped during a mass Taliban jailbreak.

If this turns out to be true, the French governement and security services — who are understood to have been following the suspect for years — are going to face some very tough questions.

Here's some quotes from Sarkozy's address the Elysee presidential palace, via Reuters:

We must be united. We must give in neither to discrimination nor revenge. I have brought together the Jewish and Muslim communities to show that terrorism will not manage to break our nation's feeling of community."

The police must find out whether the suspect acted "alone, or in a small or larger group", according to Guéant, who is quoted by Le Monde. The interior minister says that the suspect's mother, two brothers and two sisters have been taken in by the police. One of the brothers, he says, "is also engaged in salafist ideology". The other members of the family have been taken into "precuationary custody". The mother is understood to have chosen not to try to get through to her son because she feared "he would remain deaf to her appeals".

Angelique reports that the father of a man living in the block where the suspect is holed up has confirmed that his son and the residents of the other flats have been evacuated and taken to local police station

Sarkozy has paid tribute to the "exceptional work" of the police and said he has been "profoundly moved" by recent events. He has also announced he will visit Toulouse before after attending this afternoon's memorial service for the soldiers who were killed in Montauban.

President Sarkozy is reacting to today's events, saying that France should not give in to discrimination or vengeance after the shootings (Via Reuters).

The French interior minister has revealed that the suspect "was followed for several years" by the DCRI, France's secret service. But he says there was no indication that he was preparing any criminal activity. Le Figaro is now reporting that the man has stopped talking to police.

I've just spoken to the Guardian's Phoebe Greenwood, who has been at the funeral of Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, his two sons, Gabriel and Arieh, and seven-year-old Miriam Monsonego, in Jerusalem.

There was a long list of very emotional speakers from both France and Israel and all have spoken with deep emotion about the shootings in Toulouse. The chief rabbi broke down in tears as he vowed that there would be vengeance for their deaths; that God will avenge their deaths. During his speech there were wails from the crowd."

One mourner told Phoebe that although the school was "a very safe place", the murders would make many Jews worried about security in Europe consider moving to Israel. She said:

Many of the people who are thinking about moving to Israel now certainly will."

Le Figaro reports that the vehicle destroyed by the police was a van belonging to the suspect and that a small machine gun and other weapons were found inside it.

Although eyes are fixed on events in Toulouse, today has already seen the burial — in Israel — of the rabbi and three children shot dead in Monday's attack. One Israeli official has described the attack as the act of "wild animals made crazy by their hatred". Reuters has this:

The victims' bodies were wrapped in burial shrouds in accordance with orthodox tradition after being flown overnight from France. The funeral took place in a hill-top cemetery at the entrance to Jerusalem.

"The Jewish people face wild and insatiable animals, wild animals made crazy by their hatred," the speaker of parliament, Reuben Rivlin, said in a eulogy at the burial site.

The victims were 30-year-old Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, his children Gabriel, 4, and Arieh, 5, and the daughter of the school's principal, seven-year-old Miriam Monsonego.

"The entire house of Israel weeps over these murders," Rivlin said.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, who flew to Israel to attend the funeral, said at an earlier meeting with Israeli President Shimon Peres that he had come to express "the solidarity of the French people with the Israeli nation" in its time of sorrow. He added:

"The blood of both our peoples was spilled in this murder."

Angelique has clarified that the "communication device" for which the suspect gave up his pistol was a mobile phone. The BBC, meanwhile, are reporting that buses have been brought in to evacuate residents from the siege area and that a blast heard a little while ago was down to the police using a controlled explosion to move a car.

In case it had escaped anyone's attention that the French presidential elections are just weeks away, the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen has told French TV that the shootings are the result of France's mistaken policy in Afghanistan and said France should wage war against "these fundamentalist political and religious groups that are killing our children". (Via Reuters)

A source close to the investigation has told AFP that the suspect's name is Mohamed Merah and he is a French national of Algerian origin. (via BBC)

Here's a Googlemap showing the house where the siege is under way and also the Jewish school where three children and a rabbi were murdered on Monday.Click on the map to expand.

Sky News' Mark Stone has posted this panoramic picture of the scene in Toulouse showing there's a media presence to match the police's.

The BBC is reporting that scooters appear to have played a pivotal role in finding the suspect. He is believed to have been exchanged emails with one of the soldiers shot dead in last week's attacks and arranged a meeting at which the soldier was killed. He is also reported to have taken a scooter - the vehicle used in the murders - to be resprayed at a Toulouse garage following the first attacks.

Reuters reports that the 24-year-old suspect threw his pistol from the window of the house in exhange for a "communication device". But according to Guéant, he still has an arsenal including an Uzi sub-machine gun and a Kalashnikov assault rifle.



View Rue du Sergent Vigne, Toulouse in a larger map

"He said … he will turn himself in this afternoon," Gueant told BFM television, adding that authorities were determined to take the suspect alive so he could stand trial.

Claude Guéant, the French interior minister, says the suspect has announced that he will turn himself in sometime in afternoon. But it also appears that the man, who threw a pistol out of the window a little while ago, has other weapons around him.

According to Le Monde, officers from the French police's counter terrorism unit, Raid (which stands for Recherche, Assistance, Intervention, Dissuasion - or Research, Assistance, Intervention, Deterrence) are conducting today's operation.

According to the BBC, who are quoting the French interior minister, Claude Guéant, the suspect is negotiating with police and has thrown a Colt 45 pistol out of the window (police have previosuly identified a .45 calibre pistol as a weapon used in all three attacks).

As Reuters points out, immigration and Islam have been major themes of the election campaign as Sarkozy tries to woo supporters of the far-right leader Marine Le Pen.

Analysts say the shootings could transform the election debate and possibly tone down the populist rhetoric.

Jean Marc, a 56-year-old restaurant owner in the city who declined to give his last name, said he believed the crisis would benefit the far right or Sarkozy in the election.



"The Socialists don't talk about this stuff and it shows they don't know what they are doing. [The police] need to get this guy."

A police source has told Reuters that officers could launch an assault if the standoff lasts for some time, adding:

"There are more and more people around, so this creates a dangerous situation."

The wires are also reporting that a package bomb has exploded at the Indonesian Embassy in Paris today, causing minor damage but no injuries.

A Paris police official said an employee at the embassy discovered a suspicious package and stepped back in time before exploded. There was minor damage to a window but no injuries, the official said.

Indonesia's foreign minister, Marty Natalegawa, says it is too early to say whether there is any link between the mail bomb and the attack on the Jewish school in Toulouse. (Via AP)

Here's some background from AP:

For years the main terrorist threat that French authorities have been concerned about has been al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, which grew from an extremist group in the former French colony of Algeria.

French officials have been worried that the group may try to conduct an action in France ahead of presidential elections in April and May, a counterterrorism official told the Associated Press this week. So far, it has never succeeded in reaching across the Mediterranean Sea to strike in Europe.

While the Toulouse raid was under way, the bodies of the four victims of the school shooting arrived in Israel for burial. The bodies of the rabbi, two of his children and a daughter of the school's principal were accompanied to Israel by French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe. They landed early today.

The scale of the police response is, understandably, huge. Angelique has spoken to a police trade union rep on the ground, who's told her that at least 300 police are involved in the operation

Angelique adds:

In a neighbouring street to the stand off, Marc Stulman, local general secretary of the Jewish umbrella group, the Crif, said he had been briefed by the interior minister 20 mins ago.

He said the suspect is still holed up in his home and that there had been an exchange of gunfire this morning. He added there was "immense relief" in Toulouse this morning that police had located the suspect:

"People can go to school this morning as normal. And we hope tomorrow will be a better day."

The Guardian's Paris correspondent, Angelique Chrisafis has just sent this dispatch from Toulouse:

On the leafy neighbouring streets, lined with smart houses with front gardens, residents were in shock. One local said he had spoken by phone to the couple who lived in the flat directly opposite the suspect. He said:

They don't know what's going on, they are in their bedroom hiding under their bed, terrified. Just after 3am they heard a commotion, the man shouted down to the police 'I have seen you!' and began firing a gun. They don't know the man well, they said they just used to pass him on the stairwell."

Good morning. People are waking up to the news that a man has been arrested over the Toulouse shootings while another is engaged in an armed stand-off with police. Three officers were injured in a shoot-out during the swoop on a house in Toulouse on Wednesday morning, police said.

Reports quoted police as saying the man barricaded inside the house had told them he wanted to avenge the deaths of Palestinian children. He was described as a French national with an Algerian mother. The suspect already arrested is said to be his brother.

Heavily armed police in bullet-proof vests and helmets cordoned off the residential area where the raid was taking place. Witnesses at the scene heard several shots at about 3.40am local time.