French police have detained 19 people in a crackdown on suspected Islamist extremists in cities around the country.

The funeral of the gunman who killed seven people has been delayed for 24 hours after the mayor of Toulouse said burying him in the city would be "inappropriate".

The gunman who killed seven people in France’s worst terror attacks in years will be buried in a Muslim cemetery near Toulouse where he died in a gunfight with police, religious officials say.

The man who claimed responsibility for a killing spree in southern France had separated from his wife days before the attacks and was suffering “psychological difficulties”, his lawyer said.

Arabic news network Al-Jazeera has been given footage of the deadly attacks on soldiers and a Jewish school in France, but said it will not air the tapes.

A video showing the deadly attacks on soldiers and a Jewish school in France and sent to Arabic TV network Al-Jazeera will not be broadcast, the company said today.

France will bar radical Muslim preachers from entering the country to participate in an Islamic conference next month as part of a crackdown after shootings by an al Qaeda-inspired gunman, president Nicolas Sarkozy said.

A lawyer says a Frenchman suspected of helping his brother plot attacks against Jewish school children and paratroopers knew nothing about what was going on.

French prosecutors have filed preliminary murder and terrorism charges against the brother of a gunman who killed Jewish schoolchildren and paratroopers in attacks that stunned the country.

The Paris prosecutor’s office has opened a judicial inquiry into whether the brother of a radical gunman who killed seven in southern France was complicit in preparing terrorist acts.

The mother of the Frenchman accused of killing seven people in a shooting rampage has been released without charge, a judicial official said today.

The older brother of the Toulouse gunman who killed seven people has said he is "proud" of Mohamed Merah's actions.

France’s prime minister yesterday rejected accusations his government could have prevented the multiple murders by an Islamic militant who was supposedly being watched by intelligence services.

A post-mortem examination carried out on the gunman suspected of a suspected killing spree in France showed he suffered some 20 bullet wounds, although only two were fatal, officials said today.

There is no evidence that gunman Mohamed Merah had links with al Qaida or other terror groups, a French official says.

France’s prime minister has rejected suggestions that anti-terrorism authorities fell down on the job in monitoring a radical Islamist who gunned down seven people in a wave of killings that revolted the country.

Inspired by radical Islam and trained in Afghanistan, the gunman methodically killed French schoolchildren, a rabbi and paratroopers and faced down hundreds of police for 32 hours.

French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen says her anti-Islam agenda has been vindicated after a French Muslim claiming ties to al-Qaida took responsibility for the country’s worst killing spree in years.

A 23-year-old gunman who said al-Qaida inspired him to kill seven people died in a hail of bullets as he scrambled out of a ground-floor window during a gun battle with police commandos.

The gunman who claimed responsibility for a radical Islam-inspired killing spree was shot in the head by police, officials say.

An investigation is under way to see if the radical Islamic gunman suspected of killing seven French people had any accomplices, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said today.

An Islamic extremist who boasted of killing seven people died today after jumping from his window, gun in hand, in a fierce shootout with French police.

The man suspected of carrying out an al-Qaida-linked killing spree, Mohammed Merah, is dead after a 32-hour siege in Toulouse, a police union official says.

French police are inside the apartment where the suspected gunman Mohammed Merah has been holed up, according to sources quoted by AFP news agency.

The chief suspect in an al Qaida-linked killing spree who is holed up in an apartment wants to “die with weapons in his hands”, according to France’s interior minister.

Riot police set off explosions outside an apartment building in an effort to force the surrender of a gunman who boasted of bringing France “to its knees” with an al-Qaida-linked terror spree that killed seven people.

Three explosions were heard last night outside the home of the gunman wanted for shooting seven people dead.

As Mohammed Merah’s stand-off with French police came to a climax late last night, French television released a picture of the gunman wanted for shooting seven people.

The gunman wanted for shooting seven people dead plans to turn himself in to French police surrounding him at night “to be more discreet,” the Interior Minister says.

Police raided the French school gunman’s home as he was poised to carry out another series of shootings, a prosecutor said.

French police have said they will storm the flat where the suspected Jewish school massacre gunman is holed up if he does not surrender.