A man claiming to be a member of al Qaeda has taken four hostages in a bank in the south-western French city of Toulouse, including the bank manager, police officials said on Wednesday.
The man took several hostages in a branch of French bank CIC and fired a shot after an attempted armed robbery apparently went wrong, UNSA police union official Cedric Delage told Reuters. Another police source said there were four hostages.
An anti-terrorist police unit was on its way to the scene and the area was sealed off, Delage said. He could not confirm the man’s claim to be a member of the al Qaeda militant group.
In March, a young al Qaeda-inspired gunman who travelled by scooter shot dead three soldiers, a rabbi and three Jewish children in Toulouse.
The man, 23-year-old Mohammed Merah, was later shot dead by police after a standoff at his home in the city, in the same area as the CIC bank that was under siege on Wednesday.
The bank is 100 metres from Merah’s flat, in an area adjacent to the barracks where the elite Raid police unit was based during the siege of Merah’s flat.
Mohamed Merah, a Frenchman of Algerian descent, killed seven people in three separate attacks. His victims included three children and a teacher at a Jewish school, and three soldiers. Merah filmed his attacks and sent the footage to police.
Merah was suspected to have had an accomplice within the Muslim community.
In the wake of the shootings, the French authorities set up an investigation into whether Merah had accomplices and into possible Islamist indoctrination practices in prisons.
On 7 June, a man armed with a shotgun took hostage a security guard at the French weather service, Meteo France. The hostage-taker fired several shots and was seriously injured when police returned fire.
His hostage was uninjured.