Same Gun Used to Shoot Soldiers, Students in France

Whoever opened fire on a Jewish school in Toulouse, Southern France, used the same gun as the one that shot four paratroopers last week.

Update, 12:28 p.m. EDT: The man killed on Monday morning has been identified as 30-year-old Jonathan Sandler, a teacher at the school and a native of Jerusalem. His 3- and 6-year-old sons were also killed, as  well as a 10-year-old girl, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Update, 11:55 a.m. EDT: French police have confirmed the same gun was used to shoot the French paratroopers as was used in Monday's school shooting, the Associated Press just reported.

Original: A shooting at a Jewish school in Toulouse, Southern France, has put the region into a "mood of panic" as the evidence mounts that it was related to two nearby shootings of soldiers last week. A man who reportedly opened fire on students and adults in the school, killing a father and his two children plus another child, before fleeing on a motor scooter, used the same method as the assassin who killed three French paratroopers and injured a fourth in two separate incidents. The man used a .45 caliber pistol, the same as the one that killed the soldiers, after the 9-mm weapon he started with jammed, the BBC reported. He fled the scene on a black motor scooter, just like the gunman in last week's attacks.

French police had already been investigating the soldiers' killings with a special task force that included serial killer and terrorism experts, AFP reported last week. President Nicolas Sarkozy left the campaign trail to come to the scene of Monday's killings, and noted the connection to last week's shootings: "There are some similarities but it’s much too early to say if there is a real link or not," he said, though many in the panicked region have already made the connection, with other religious sites and Jewish schools locked down and soldiers told not to wear their uniforms in public, The Guardian and The New York Times report.