FRANCE

Critics Slam Toulouse Shooter Raid

Press, gendarmerie say he should be alive.

Amid a growing clamor of criticism over their handling of the siege that ended in the killing of Toulouse shooting suspect Mohamed Merah, French officials on Friday defended the RAID forces, an elite unit of the national police and denied that Merah acted in connection with any foreign terrorist groups. “Everything had been done to take Merah alive,” said Paris prosector François Molins. But that opinion has been ridiculed by Christian Prouteau, founder of a special forces unit of the national gendarmerie: “How did the best police unit not manage to take one man?” The French press is leading the charge for a fuller explanation of the raid.