Paris (CNN) -- A gunman opened fire on a Jewish school in southern France Monday, killing four people -- the third shooting of ethnic minority people in the region in the past 10 days.
The gunman pulled up in front of Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse just before 8 a.m. and started shooting, authorities said.The victims included a father and his two children, they said. A 3-year-old child was also among the dead, and a 17-year-old was wounded, local prosecutor Michael Valet said.The gunman got close enough to his victims to shoot them in the head, local journalist Gil Bousquet said.Families hugged and wept in front of police cars around the school in the aftermath of the shooting, pictures from the scene showed.French President Nicolas Sarkozy flew to the school, where he declared that "everything must be done so the killer is arrested.""And of course our thoughts are with these families that are shattered -- a mother who has lost her husband and her two children the same day, the director of the school saw a little girl die before his eyes," Sarkozy said in a somber appearance at the entrance to the school.He called for a minute's silence in schools across the country in response to the "national tragedy."The gunman wore a motorcycle helmet and fled on a motor scooter after the shootings, Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said -- the same method used in the shootings of soldiers on March 11 and 15.Those soldiers were all of North African origin, Brandet said."It's a horrible tragedy," Brandet said of Monday's shootings."Even if it's too early to say whether or not they are the same weapons, there are similarities," Brandet said, citing the use of a motorcycle and the location of the killings.Ballistics tests will help determine whether the same guns were used in all three shootings, he said, speaking on CNN affiliate BFM.Prosecutors in Paris have opened an investigation into all three shootings under anti-terrorism powers.The interior ministry has ordered police across the country to contact Jewish organizations to arrange increased vigilance, Brandet said.France, which has one of the largest Jewish populations in Europe, had 389 reported acts of anti-Semitism in 2011, according to Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France, known in French as CRIF.Its head, Richard Prasquier, and Minister of Education Luc Chatel accompanied Sarkozy to Toulouse.The news of Monday's shooting brought immediate reaction from the Jewish world."We follow with shock the news coming from France, and we trust the French authorities to shed full light on this crime and to bring those responsible to justice," said Yigal Palmor, the spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry.Gilles Bernheim, the chief rabbi of France, said he was "horrified" and "upset."Moscow Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt said on behalf of the Conference of European Rabbis that "the thoughts of Jewish communities across Europe will be with the families of the victims."Presidential candidate Francois Hollande said he felt "horror" at the killing.On March 11, a soldier was on his motorbike when a helmeted man on another motorcycle pulled up and shot and killed him, Toulouse police Capt. David Delattre said.The soldier was not in uniform, and his motorbike did not have any military identification, Delattre said.On Thursday, two other soldiers were shot dead and another injured by a black-clad man wearing a motorcycle helmet in the southwestern French city of Montauban, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) from Toulouse.
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