French officials deny reports of Toulouse gunman arrest

There are conflicting reports on whether a suspect wanted in a series of killings in Toulouse, France, has been arrested.

Earlier Wednesday, several news agencies reported the 24-year-old was taken into custody, but now French officials have denied those reports.

The man has been holed up in an apartment building in Toulouse.

He is wanted in connection with seven deaths, including four at a Jewish school earlier this week.

Hundreds of policemen swept into a residential neighbourhood in northern Toulouse early Wednesday and exchanged fire with the suspect.

There were sporadic exchanges of gunfire since the initial raid, in which three of the French police were hit and injured.

The suspect is described as a French national, originally from Algeria, who claims to have ties with al-Qaeda.

French Interior Minister Claude Gueant said he is known to authorities for having spent time in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Gueant said.

The shooting suspect, who is a French national, is “talking a lot, claiming his jihadist convictions” and calling himself a “mujahedeen.”

“He said he wants to avenge the deaths of Palestinians,” the minister said, adding that he is “less explicit” about killing French paratroopers.

Authorities have been conducting a massive manhunt across a swath of southern France after seven people were killed in three attacks over the past several days, and France’s terror alert level was raised to its highest level ever in the region.

A French paratrooper was killed in Toulouse on March 11, two other paratroopers were killed and one injured on Thursday in the nearby town of Montauban, and three children and a rabbi were killed in a shooting at a Jewish school in Toulouse on Monday.

The paratroopers were of Muslim and French Caribbean origin, but the interior minister said the suspect told them the ethnic origin has nothing to do with his actions. “He’s after the army.”