LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Prosecutor Michel Valet said that the 30-year-old rabbi and his 3-year-old and 6-year-old sons were killed in the attack just before classes began at the school. Another child, the 8-year-old daughter of the school principal, was also killed in the attack. Valet says that a 17-year-old boy was also seriously wounded and was rushed to ea nearby hospital.

"The drama occurred a bit before 8 a.m. A man arrived in front of the school on a motorcycle or scooter," Valet said. The man got off his scooter outside the school and opened fire.

"He shot at everything he had in front of him, children and adults," he said. "The children were chased inside the school." The gunman then fled the scene on a scooter.

A police official said the same powerful 11.43-caliber handgun used in the school attack on a school in Toulouse was used in an attack four days previously that took the lives of two paratroopers in nearby Montauban. Three members of a parachute regiment were shot in broad daylight as they stood by a cash point in Montauban, 28 miles north of Toulouse, on Thursday afternoon. Twenty-six-year old Abel Chennouf and 24-year-old Mohamed Legouard died on the spot. A third soldier is in a critical condition in hospital.

The previous Sunday in a suburb of Toulouse, an off-duty member of another regiment was shot at point-blank range by a gunman on a scooter. Thirty-year-old Imad Ibn-Ziaten, a marshal in the 1st Parachute Regiment, was standing next to his Suzuki 650cc motorbike outside a gym and had been wearing his helmet at the time. He was not in uniform.

The dead and injured were all of North African and Caribbean origin.

In all three instances, the attacker arrived on a motorcycle, apparently alone, and then sped away. The suspect remains at large.

The killer also used a 9-caliber gun, the police official said. At least 15 shots were fired at the school in a residential neighborhood in northeastern Toulouse. The official based in Paris requested anonymity. The motive for the killings remains unclear.

The Paris prosecutor's office says it will investigate eventual terrorist links to the school killing and the two killings of paratroopers last week. The prosecutor's office reported in a statement that the attacks did not indicate any evidence of terrorism.

France's Prime Minister Francois Fillon says he has asked for all schools and religious buildings to be secured in the wake of the recent school shooting.

Sarkozy visited the school accompanied by Richard Prasquier, the president of CRIF, the umbrella group representing Jewish organizations.

"It's a day of national tragedy," Sarkozy said. "The barbary, the savagery, the cruelty cannot win. Hate cannot win. The nation is much stronger."

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