22/03/2012 BBC World News

The authorities in France say the man suspected of shooting seven

people is dead after his apartment was stormed. TRANSLATION: Mohammed

Merah jumped through tfr window with one weapon in his hand, while

still shooting. He was found dead on the ground. Two police were

wounded in an exchange of gunfire with the suspect during the

operation. This is the scene live outside the suspect's home in

Toulouse. Welcome to BBC World News. A general strike in Portugal

against the country's harsh austerity measures, as the head of

the European Bank says the worst is over. Is China's economy in a

slowdown as factory output shrinks for the fifth month in a row? The

French Interior Minister has confirmed that Mohammed Merah -

suspected of killing seven people - has himself been shot dead. The

gunman apparently died after throwing himself from a window

during a standoff with police. It followed a dramatic period of

gunfire and explosions as special forces tried to enter the apartment

in Toulouse. This is the scene live in Toulouse. We have heard from the

interior minister. Mohammed Merah died, he admitted to police and

journalists shooting dead three children and their teacher at a

Jewish skoorblgs as well as three soldiers. -- Jewish school. This is

the man who has admitted to seven murders. Mohammed Merah, filmed by

friends joy riding in 2010, long before he became the focus of one

of the biggest man hunts France has ever seen. This morning he was

himself shot dead after police stormed theed bying where he was

holed up. TRANSLATION: At the time we decided to inspect the bathroom,

that is when the killer came out of bathroom. He was shooting violently,

the shots were frequent and severe. And even people who are used to

such things, they said they have never seen such to rosti. The

policeman tried to -- such ferocity. The policeman tried to defend

himself, but at the end, Mohammed Merah jumped through the window

with one weapon in his hand, while still shooting. He was found dead

on the ground Over night they tried to intimidate him with explosions

reported to have taken out the door of his apartment and blown a mole

in the wall. Today there were further explosions, grenades used

as the police moved in. Ambulances and firefighters on hand. Two

officers were injured by Mohammed Merah, who made good his vow to die

with a gun in his hand. Christian Fraser has been covering the

shootings for us A bloody ends and not without risk for the commandos

storming the apartment. No, a dramatic and surprising end. We

were expecting to have news he had killed himself in the early hour

and then there was this long and sustained round of gun fire which

caught us by surprise and perhaps the commandos inside the flat too,

because two of them we hear have been injured. You heard some

details from Claude Gueant. We knew from local television stations that

they were moving into the flat. I understand they were putting the

fibre optic cameras through each room, trying to locate Mohammed

Merah. When suddenly he appeared at the bathroom door with his weapons.

You can hear from ta round of gun fire it lasted maybe 15 or 20

seconds. And as the inteer area minister said, he then jumped out

of bathroom window, still with one weapon in his hand. The apartment

was surround and they fired on him again and then he was found dead.

Two police officers injured and two injured at the start of siege. B --

but the squad use have had a fearsome reputation?

particularly in France. They have highly trained policemen who are

used to kind -- this kind of siege. They took the decision to withdraw,

because he had fired at them through door. The whole purpose of

the operation was to limit as best they could any further injuries or

death to police officers. The question mark will be as to why

they decided to go in when they did. We know that negotiations had been

broken off for six hours. And so I imagine that we will maybe hear his

from the president, but it is possible they thought he was dead.

They put in a number of flash grenades to try and wear him down,

negotiations through the mobile phone that they had exchanged with

him was broken off. So there was a reason to think that, particularly

since we had heard some muffled gun fire in the early hours, that maybe

he had taken his own life. But a dramatic end as he suddenly

appeared at the bathroom door and both sides opened fire. Tell us

about the negotiating, and why that had broken down. But at some stage

his family were called on to speak to him? Yes they had said from the

off this was a man who was defiant to the end, he was stub important

and revelling in his -- stubborn and rafling in this. He rang a

television station to brag about what he dob. So that is not an easy

person to negotiate with. They wanted to take him alive. So they

brought his mother to the scene. I understand from one police source

that she said he never listens to me any way. So that proved. She

didn't serve any purpose and through the day the deadlines he

had set. He said he would come out in the afternoon and he said he

would come out at dark. The deadlines came and went and he was

Toyeing - toying with the police. They switched off the electricity

around the apartment block and turned off the water and the gas.

And they turned off data communications. And they were

making it as hard as they could for him. To try and force him out. But

in the end he was intent on trying to take some more police officers

with him and came out with all his weapons blazing. This of course

coinciding with a French presidential election campaign,

just four and a half weeks away. What sorts of impact do people

think this will have on that election, or have all the

candidates been united in their response to this? They have been

united in their response to Jewish and Muslim communities. We have

seen Nicolas Sarkozy and the socialist front runner attending

services together and that sort of thing. And talking about the need

for unity and a sense of common purpose in the country. The most

interesting thing is the battle on the right. Thiss important, because

the battle between the far right and the UNP, the leading party, is

the one that may decide the election. If Nicolas Sarkozy can

take votes from Jean-Marie Le Pen, he has a better chance of catching

his rival. It remains to be seen whether he improves his standing on

right or whether people think that in fact it was not a good operation

and they should have stopped a known fundamentalist and the police

were injured on two attempts on the apartment block. It was not a

particularly successful operation. The answer will be in the polls and

the next poll we get we will see whether he gets a bump or you.

think you alongside the camera position that we're looking at now,

where we can see firefighters and other teams taking off their

helmets and a sense of relaxation there. Has the flat itself been

cleared? Because there were fears that it may have been booby trapped.

Yes that is right. There have been operations in the past in Europe

that people were recall where police have gone into apartment and

explosions have been set off. That is what they wanted to avoid. When

I was here just after that gun fire, there was a lot of activity began.

We saw a Gurney being taken out of back of the ambulance. One

ambulance was moved around the corner towards the apartment block

and we saw firefighter with fire extinguishers and there was a sense

they were then centre stage in the operation to get the bliss out and

to ensure that there was no -- police out and ensure there was no

threat to neighbouring houses. I would imagine that they are now

going through apartment to ensure there is nothing there, no booby

traps and they will be looking for any clues, or suggestions that this

was a wider operation than just one man. They have picked up his

brother. His brother had weapons in the boot of his car. It is a group,

an Al-Qaeda group with Jihadist and extreme views that he was connected

to. And that is why they wanted to take him alive. They wanted the

intelligence from him. They will be looking to see if there is anything

there that can be useful. Thank you. Let's stay with the political

aspect of think and go to Llew Schofield who is in Paris. -- Hugh.

Nicolas Sarkozy will be making a statement shortly. What impact do

you assess this is havingen on the presidential campaign? -- having on

the presidential campaign? It will give Nicolas Sarkozy a lift.

Whether it is a permanent lift that ill will -- that will carry him

through to the election, but I will say there will be a lift in the

polls for him when they start coming out over the weekend. I

think people will say that he has behaved in a very presidential way

and remember that Nicolas Sarkozy is a man who people didn't like,

because they thought he wasn't presidential enough. He was too

money other yen taited and not what they wanted in a president. --

orientated. But he has behaved as they want a president to. At the

funerals, he was there holding the hands of the muss him mother -

Muslim mother of one of soldier victims. He talked about the

children being the children of France. But the general point is

when there is a law and order problem, it tends to be the rate

that benefits. I would see a -- right that benefits. I would see a

lift for him. The socialist candidate has acted with grace as

well, but the man in charge, if he does it properly will get the

bigger lift. Yet there do appear on the face of it to have been

intelligence failure, this man was on the radar and managed to amass

weapons and go on this killing spree. I don't think there will be

any political fall out from that. It is always possible to criticise,

most people will say this was an operation which, while it didn't

have the ideal effect, in the sense they stop him in time and at the

end didn't capture him alive. It was still an efficient operation,

which ended in him being neutralised. I don't think there

will be any political chap Tall to be -- capital to be had. We Theresa

May say, why -- we may sit and say why didn't that happen? But to play

that tune would be politically damaging to that person who made it.

Thank you. This is the scene after the ending of that siege. Two

police officers injured in that raid. They went in with stun

grenades and sent in video probes as well. Mohammed Merah, found in

the bathroom, and as they stormed that, Mohammed Merah fired several

shots, sus stained bursts of gun fire by Mohammed Merah and the

police team. Mohammed Merah tried to escape by jumping through

bathroom window, which had been blown out by commandos and then

fell dead to the ground A bloody end to this siege, where Mohammed

Merah admitted being behind the killing of seven people in Toulouse

and the surrounding areas in the past week. You are watching BBC

world news. Still to come a coup attempt in Mali as propertyer - o'

plotter say they have over turned the president. A a former commander

of the Turkish armed forces has gone on trial accused of trying to

overthrow the Government. Our correspondent is in Istanbul.

informations are have gone on for four years. 500 people are facing

charges. It has got confusing and when you see somebody like this

general, the supreme commander of the armed forces, faces charning

charges that could put him in jiel for 20 year that brings home how

much the military's fortunes have Like many of his supporters, he is

saying, look at what they are charging me with. This is one of

many cases that government prosecutors are pushing. They have

uncovered 42 websites that they say were making propaganda against the

current government while Ilker Basbug was commander of the armed

forces, therefore as he carries responsibility. He said that he was

the most powerful man in the country and had NATO's second

largest armed forces in the country. If I wanted to overthrow the

government, do you think I would have really use the Internet? There

are also 250 serving more former military officers under indictment

at the moment. People are saying that these indictments simply do

not make sense. Many people in Turkey say that the military in

Turkey was unaccountable for decades. Many people disappeared,

and all sorts of ghastly things went on. The problem is that

Turkey's judicial system is slow and cumbersome. All that time,

Ilker Basbug, once the most powerful military man in the land,

has to sit in prison. The controversy over what to do

with Colonel Gaddafi's former right-hand man, Abdulluah al-

Senussi, continues in Mauritania. The authorities there have denied

making a commitment to hand him over to Libya. Mr Senussi was

caught last weekend carrying a false passport. He has been

indicted by the International Criminal Court in the Hague, but

the Libyan interim government want him back to stand trial on numerous

charges of murder and human rights abuses.

The headlines or online and on our website.

This is BBC World News. The headlines: A Muslim militant wanted

for killing seven people in France is dead. Police stormed his

apartment. Two officers were wounded in the operation.

Mario Draghi, the worst is over? Yes, he says the worst is over in

terms of the Eurozone debt crisis, but he says there are problems. He

points to things like inflation and the budget deficit, which she says

looks better in the Eurozone than in the United States. On the same

date that he says this, we get purchasing managers' index numbers

and they are all pointing to the negative. These purchasing managers

are the guys who sit at the top of the manufacturing or service

sectors. If they are pessimistic, it feeds through down the chain.

All of the Eurozone points to the negative. Perhaps more worrying,

Germany, at the core of the Eurozone, it is also seen its

manufacturing shrank for the first time this year. The question is, is

it over? That is one of the questions I asked the experts.

think the worst is over in the sense that financial catastrophe

has been averted by the second bail out of Greece. But that does not

mean that the crisis is resolved. There is a lot of hard work to do.

We are likely to see the euro slipped back into recession. We are

in a better position than we were four months ago but that does not

mean it is clear. A survey measuring manufacturing

activity in China shows output shrinking for the fifth month in a

row. The HSBC purchasing managers index fell to 48. 1. Any number

below 50 indicates contraction. It's based on data compiled from

monthly replies to questionnaires sent to purchasing executives in

over 400 manufacturing companies of different sizes. The official

figures are released next week. Patrick Chovanec is Associate

Professor at Sing-Wa University's School of Economics and Management

in Beijing. He says the numbers point to a much broader downturn

than many people realise. A lot of people I side of China are focused

on the negative impact of the Eurozone crisis, declining demand

from Europe, and sluggish demand from the United States on Chinese

exports. The numbers tell us that is part of the picture, but there

is another part of the picture, a slowdown within China driven by

domestic issues. There is a downturn in the property market

which affect a lot of industries here. That affects steel and cement,

furniture, other things that feed into that industry. There is also

concern about mounting bad debt in the system and the impact that has

on the ability to finance further growth.

A Brazilian prosecutor has charged the oil giant Chevron with damaging

the environment in connection with an oil spill in November. The

drilling rig operator Transocean and 17 senior executives were also

charged over the spill off the coast of Rio de Janeiro. The

prosecutor, Eduardo Santos de Oliveira, said the oil spill

affected the marine ecosystem. Chevron and Transocean dispute the

charges. The chief executive of McDonalds,

Jim Skinner, is stepping down after almost eight years in the job. He's

to be replaced by Dan Thompson, currently the chief operating

officer, at the end of June. Under Mr Skinner's leadership the share

price has more than tripled. And the American delivery company

Fedex reports earnings later today. Profits are expected to rise thanks

to a gradually improving economy and cost cuts. Analysts are keen to

hear its plans for Europe after two of its rivals, UPS and TNT, agreed

of its rivals, UPS and TNT, agreed a merger.

Let's take a quick look at the markets.

It has been the same old story this week. The steam is off the rally in

the markets at the moment. There are lots of worries that Greece

will not be able to meet the austerity measures. Portugal

remains another focus by investors remains another focus by investors

and the markets. That is the business news.

You looked awfully bored with those markets.

I was fascinated by how you were able to switch from Asian to

European markets seamlessly. Courts mutinous troops in Mali

claim they have ended the rule of President Amadou Toumani Toure and

suspended the constitution. They have also brought in a curfew. The

announcement from the rebel troops came after international appeals

for calm after an outbreak of violent unrest. A statement on the

President's Twitter page denied there had been a coup attempt.

These are the men who claim they are now in charge of Mali. There

has been no word yet from the President's side. At half past four

in the morning local time a group of renegade soldiers appeared on

state television to announce they had ended the rule of President

Amadou Toumani Toure. The soldiers say they have acted to end what

they call an incompetent regime. They said it was unable to fight an

ethnic rebellion in the north of the country. The following measures

have been taking, the constitution is suspended, all the institutions

of the Republic are dissolved, and an inclusive government will be

created after consultations. this is the dramatic culmination of

a chaotic 24 hours in the capital, Bamako. It started when angry

soldiers took to the streets and began exchanging fire with forces

guarding the presidential palace. We heard gunfire and people started

to run. All this was going on and we had no idea what was happening.

The rebels accused the government of failing to provide the weaponry

needed to fight the ethnic Tuareg rebellion in the country's North.

The last comments came from the president on Wednesday evening. He

denied that there was a coup attempt. But the President had

already agreed to stand down and an election was due in less than one

month. The soldiers say they will hand power to a brand new

democratically elected government, but they did not say how or when.

You're watching BBC World News. Let's take you back to Toulouse, in

the aftermath of the bloody end to the siege there. The gunman,

Mohammed Merah, was shot dead. Two police commandos were wounded. The

armed man had been holed up in the bathroom. He had not made contact

with police for several hours but as they went in, he opened up with

his weapons, and fell to the ground dead as he went through the

bathroom window. Let's speak to a French journalist. For the most

dramatic, bloody end to this. What more details are you picking up

from what we heard from the Interior Minister? These

circumstances of this a very traumatic shoot-out are not exactly

clear. I side of the building, we could hear sustained bursts of

gunfire for something like five minutes. -- outside. As you said,

Mohammed Merah died while jumping out of the window and shooting. I

think a total of around 300 shots were fired. Were you close by? Did

you see this storming? I must confess, our colleagues were on the

scene and they could see and hear a lot. But there were no reporters

around to see exactly what happened. The secrecy of the whole operation

was held very tightly, and it took a few minutes to get confirmation

that Mohammed Merah had been killed., oh OK. We will leave it

there. We are running out of time but we will stay with these live