French police tighten siege on Al Qaeda gunman

French police stepped up pressure Thursday on a besieged Al Qaeda militant who boasted of having brought France to its knees with a wave of brutal attacks that left seven dead.The sound of blasts and gunshots were heard overnight near the flat in Toulouse, southern France, where the gunman was holed up for a second day.One source said anti-terrorist officers besieging the apartment had exploded a series of charges before and after midnight to intimidate the 23-year-old suspect, who has claimed responsibility for the seven murders.Prosecutors said Mohamed Merah, a Frenchman of Algerian descent, had fought off several police assaults on the flat on Wednesday and bragged to negotiators of having been trained by Al Qaeda on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.He expressed no regret apart from not having had enough time to kill more victims and even boasted of having brought France to its knees, Frances top anti-terror prosecutor Francois Molins told reporters.The drama began in pre-dawn raids on Wednesday, and the French authorities are convinced that they have surrounded the right man and that he has no hostages with him.While there were no obvious signs of an imminent police assault on the gunman early Thursday, a source close to the enquiry said that the final denouement was not far off.A police source played down talk of an assault on the flat.He said he wanted to give himself up. He changed his mind, so were stepping up on the pressure on him to surrender, he said.There was no indication of an exchange of fire following the blasts. Merah is thought to be armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle, a Mini-Uzi submachine pistol and a collection of handguns.Molins said Merah had claimed responsibility for three shootings over the previous 10 days in which three French paratroopers, three Jewish children and a teacher were killed in cold blood, shocking the nation.He claimed to be avenging Palestinian deaths and opposing the French militarys involvement in Afghanistan and Frances ban on full-face veils.Molins said the suspect had shot and wounded two elite officers after police first raided the Toulouse apartment building before dawn on Wednesday.Mohamed Merah explained that he belonged to Al Qaeda. He explained he had been trained by Al Qaeda in the Pakistani-Afghanistan region in Waziristan, Molins told reporters in Toulouse, scene of two of the shootings.Police and prosecutors said they had arrested Merahs mother, brother and his brothers girlfriend as part of the inquiry. Sources said the suspect had been known to the domestic security service for some years.After the failed police assault on the first floor flat in Toulouse where Merah was living, the two sides settled down to an armed siege. During the day Wednesday other residents were evacuated from the building.President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is running for re-election in an April-May vote, told religious representatives at a meeting in a police station near the siege site that the gunman had planned to carry out another attack Wednesday.Molins told reporters that Merah had chosen two Toulouse policemen to target for future assassination and planned to kill another soldier.Gueant said the suspect had thrown out a .45 pistol used in the seven murders.