[Watch] France mounts manhunt over Toulouse killings, as Sarkozy vows justice

A gunman opened this morning outside a Jewish school in Toulouse in south-western France, killing at least four people including a father and his two sons and one other student.

City Prosecutor Michel Valet said a 30-year-old man, his two sons, aged three and six, and another child aged 10, were killed. A 17-year-old was also seriously injured.

Valet said the gunman "shot at everything he could see, children and adults, and some children were chased into the school" before he fled the scene on a black scooter.

France24  correspondent Chris Bockman said the city was in "lockdown" as police searched for the gunman.

"But this is a medieval city with narrow winding roads, where it is easy for a scooter to outrun a police car," he added.

 The attack at the Ozar Hatorah secondary school follows a similar shooting last Thursday in nearby Montauban, where two soldiers were killed by a helmeted gunman riding a scooter.

 The soldiers, of the 17th Parachute Engineering Regiment recently returned from operations in Afghanistan, were killed outside their barracks.

Four days ago, a soldier from another airborne regiment was killed in Toulouse.

 "All the soldiers who were killed were from ethnic minorities," said Bockman. "So this is looking like a series of racist killings."

 According to French daily Le Figaro, spent cartridges found at the scene were of the same .45 calibre as cartridges used in the Montauban shootings last week. The paper also reported that police sources believed it was the same killer.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, however, warned that it was "too early" to link last week's shootings of soldiers with Monday's incident.

The French government on Monday called for heightened security at Jewish schools in France, while French soldiers have been banned from wearing uniform outside their bases.

Sarkozy has called the shooting a "devastating tragedy" and visited the scene of the shooting in Toulouse together with Education Minister Luc Chatel.

Socialist Party candidate Francois Hollande, who will be running against Sarkozy in the forthcoming presidential election, said he was going to Toulouse to show "solidarity" with the French Jewish community.

A spokesman for the Israeli embassy said the country was "horrified" by this morning's attack while France's Grand Rabbi stated that he was "horrified" and "stunned" and would travel immediately to Toulouse.