Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Toulouse Gun Tied to Attacks on Soldiers

The shooting attack that killed four people – a teacher and three students – at a Jewish school in Toulouse, France, has been linked to recent deadly attacks on French soldiers, forensic tests indicate.

A man riding a motorbike reportedly opened fire Monday morning outside the Ozar Hatorah School, where students were waiting to enter the building at the start of the school day. The shooter then entered the building and continued shooting at students and teachers before fleeing on his motorbike.

Several students also were injured inside the building. The dead are reported to be a 30-year-old rabbi, Jonathan Sandler, and his 3- and 6-year-old sons, as well as the 10-year-old daughter of the school’s principal. Some 200 students attend the school, according to Israel Radio.

Sandler, a dual French-Israeli citizen, reportedly was working in France for several years as an emissary and was well known in Toulouse for his outreach to secular Jews. He leaves behind a wife and 4-year-old daughter.

Forensic tests found that the weapon used in the attack at the school was the same one used in a pair of fatal shooting attacks last week targeting off-duty French soldiers in and near Toulouse. The shootings, which also were committed by a gunman on a motorbike, left three soldiers dead and another seriously wounded. The soldiers who were shot were of North African or Caribbean background.

Following the school attack, French Interior Minister Claude Gueant ordered security to be tightened around all Jewish schools in France, the French news agency AFP reported.

Gueant and French President Nicolas Sarkozy traveled toToulouse. Sarkozy called the attack a “national tragedy” and vowed to find the killer.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.