Mourners wept as they followed a hearse convoy containing the bodies of three children and a teacher shot down in an attack at a Jewish school in Toulouse, France.

The bodies of the three French-Israeli children and one teacher are due to be flown to Israel to be buried, AFP reported.

They began their journey to Israel on Tuesday after the attack on the Ozar Hatorah (gifts of the bible) Jewish school.

In Orthodox Jewish tradition bodies are buried as soon as possible after death, unless there needs to be a post-mortem.

The ceremony came after French president Nicolas Sarkozy held a nation-wide minute's silence throughout schools in the country to respect the victims.

Witnesses have told police, who have launched a major hunt for the killer, that the gunman may have been wearing a small video camera , while others have reported seeing a facial tattoo.

In the first hail of bullets Gabriel and Arieh Sander, aged three and six, were shot alongside their father Rabbi Jonathan Sandler. The killer then murdered eight-year-old Miriam Monsonego, the daughter of the school principal, Yaacov Monsonego. She was holding her satchel and trembling when he grabbed her hair, put the gun to her head and pulled the trigger.

The gunman also shot a 17-year-old student, who is now critically ill in hospital. At least four others were seriously wounded.

Police are still hunting the culprit.