A suspected al-Qaeda militant behind a wave of killings in France has died in a shootout with police who moved into his flat to end a lengthy siege.
The exact circumstances of his death were not immediately clear, but a police source said the suspect, identified by police as 23-year-old Mohamed Merah, had died while resisting RAID special police forces who had moved into the apartment in Toulouse.
Three police were wounded in the assault, one "fairly seriously", police sources said.
Sustained bursts of gunfire were heard outside the apartment shortly after sources said police were moving "rapidly" to end the siege, but progressing "step by step" through the apartment in fear of booby traps.
A total of around 300 shots were fired.
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Three loud explosions near the apartment were heard shortly before police said the officers had moved in, and an ambulance was then seen passing through a security cordon.
Interior Minister Claude Gueant arrived at the scene right before the blasts, an AFP reporter said. France's chief anti-terror prosecutor, Francois Molins, was also on site.
Merah had been holed up since overnight on Wednesday after being tracked down by police as the main suspect in a wave of shootings that killed seven people, including three soldiers and three Jewish children, was holed up.
Gueant had earlier said police had lost contact with Merah but that he had told authorities he wanted "to die weapons in hand".
Prosecutors said Merah, a Frenchman of Algerian descent, had fought off several police assaults on the flat on Wednesday and bragged to negotiators of having been trained by al-Qaeda on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
"He expressed no regret apart from not having had enough time to kill more victims and even boasted of having brought France to its knees," Molins told reporters on Wednesday.
The drama began in pre-dawn raids on Wednesday, and the French authorities are convinced they have surrounded the right man and that he had no hostages with him.
After two police were shot wounded when they attempted to raid the apartment, authorities evacuated the building, turned off electricity in the neighbourhood and settled in for the siege.
Officials had said Merah was armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle, a mini-Uzi submachine pistol and a collection of handguns.
Molins said Merah had claimed responsibility for three shootings over the previous 10 days in which three French paratroopers, three Jewish children and a teacher were killed in cold blood, shocking the nation.
He claimed to be avenging Palestinian deaths and opposing the French military's involvement in Afghanistan and France's ban on full-face veils.
