Police: Islamic gunman dead after French standoff

PARIS (AP) — French President Nicolas Sarkozy says an investigation is under way to see if the suspect in a series of radical Islam-inspired killings had any accomplices

AP Photo/Remy de la Mauviniere

A woman and children are escorted by a police officer near a building where the chief suspect in an al-Qaida-linked killing spree is holed up in an apartment in Toulouse, France, Thursday.

Sarkozy also said that anyone who regularly visits "websites which support terrorism or call for hate or violence will be punished by the law." He promised a crackdown on anyone who goes abroad "for the purposes of indoctrination in terrorist ideology."

He spoke soon after Mohamed Merah, a 23-year-old Frenchman, died after a 32-hour standoff with police in the southern city of Toulouse.

Merah was suspected of killing three schoolchildren, a rabbi and three paratroopers. He had traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan for training.