Besieged French gunman pressed to give up

French riot police set off explosions early Thursday intended to shock a suspect in the killing of soldiers, schoolchildren and a teacher to surrender. Three loud explosions and flashes of light pierced the night air shortly before midnight, followed by two explosions an hour later, as police negotiators and elite special-forces troops sought to destabilize and pressure Mohamed Merah to give up. The a 24-year-old French citizen of Algerian descent has been identified as the suspect in the killing of four people at a Jewish school Monday, and the fatal shooting of three French paratroopers last week. He had been holed up in a ground-floor property in the Cote Pavee residential neighborhood of Toulouse since early Wednesday, and initially promised to surrender Wednesday afternoon, authorities said. Authorities cut power to the area surrounding the building around nightfall Wednesday. Merah told negotiators he had links to al-Qaida, police said. His goal was to avenge Palestinian children and protest the French army's presence in Afghanistan, a prosecutor said Merah told police trying to secure his surrender. Paris Prosecutor Francois Molins said Merah told police he plotted other attacks, including one Wednesday "on a soldier he had already identified." Molins gave no further information about the alleged plot. He said Merah traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan twice in the past few years and said the U.S. Army once sent him back to France. US military officials said Merah was once picked up by police in Kandahar, Afghanistan's second-largest city, but they said they had no immediate information about detaining him or returning him to France, The Wall Street Journal reported. French authorities sought to determine whether Merah's brothers played a planning role in any French attack. His older brother, Abdelkader Merah, and their mother were in police custody but prosecutors didn't say why. Abdelkader Merah was linked to a 2007 network that sent militant fighters to Iraq but was never charged, officials said. French President Nicolas Sarkozy spoke at a memorial service for the three paratroopers Wednesday, calling their killing "a terrorist execution." He received a phone call from US President Barack Obama, Sarkozy's office and the White House said. Obama offered his condolences and praised French police efforts, Sarkozy's office said. Obama welcomed the actions taken by French authorities and underscored the United States and France stood shoulder to shoulder in fighting terrorism, Sarkozy's office and the White House said. The victims in Monday's shooting at a French Jewish school were buried in Jerusalem Wednesday. Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, a school teacher, was buried with his sons, Gabriel, 4, and Arieh, 5. Miriam Monsonego, 7, the school principal's daughter, was buried in a separate service.