French authorities defend handling of Toulouse gunman

French authorities have rejected charges that intelligence failures allowed a young man to kill seven people earlier this week.

Francois Fillon, the French prime minister, said that security officials had known Mohammed Merah, who died in a hail of police bullets, was a radical Islamist who visited Afghanistan, but said there was no reason to suspect he was planning attacks.

The intelligence services "did their job perfectly well. They identified Mohammed Merah when he made his trips", he told French radio.

Merah shot dead three Jewish children and a rabbi as they arrived at school on Monday morning, and he killed three soldiers a few days before.

Intelligence agents "watched him long enough to come to the conclusion that there was no element, no indication, that this was a dangerous man who would one day pass from words to acts," Fillon said.

"We don't have the right in a country like ours to permanently monitor without judicial authorisation someone who hasn't committed an offense... We live in a state of law," he said.

Fillon said President Nicolas Sarkozy's conservative government is working on new anti-terrorism legislation that would be drafted within two weeks.

Bernard Squarcini, the head of France's DCRI domestic intelligence agency, said there was little more that security services could have done to predict or prevent atrocities by Merah, who died after a 32-hour police siege in the south-western city of Toulouse.

Crowds gathered in a central square of Toulouse on Thursday to hold a minute's silence in tribute to seven people shot dead in a series of attacks by Merah.

Officers from an elite unit moved in on Thursday morning, killing Merah as he tried to shoot his way out of his apartment in the city.

Politicians and local media asked how French intelligence officers had failed to stop the killing spree earlier, given that security officers had been aware of Merah and even been in recent contact with him.

In November, he was questioned by French intelligence about trips to Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2010 and 2011. There are also reports that he had been on a US no-fly list since 2010.

Francois Hollande, the Socialist challenger to Sarkozy in upcoming presidential elections next month, referred to reports of possible failings in the surveillance of Merah at a rally late on Thursday.

With the end of the siege, Hollande said, "questions will have to be put".