The suspect in France’s school and paratrooper shootings has claimed al Qaida connections, the French Interior Minister confirmed on Wednesday.
The news comes as France launched the biggest manhunt in living history to find the killer of four people shot dead on Monday at a Jewish school in Toulouse. A rabbi was shot and killed, as were his two sons and a girl, reported to be the school principal's daughter.
French police are currently raiding a house in the city in the search for the gunman, the Press Association reported but Interior Minister Claude Gueant told French radio the authorities did not know the killer's identity.
"For now, we carry on working," he said. "We're no further than that."
French president Nicholas Sarkozy declared a day of "national tragedy" in France following the tragedy and, for the first time in the country's history, put the area on a "scarlet" terrorism alert.