The suspect in Toulouse incident died on Thursday as he jumped out of an apartment window at the end of a 32-hour siege in southern France.

The suspect in Toulouse incident died on Thursday as he jumped out of an apartment window at the end of a 32-hour siege in southern France.

Mohamed Merah, the suspect in a wave of shootings that killed seven people, had tried to blast his way out of the siege in the city of Toulouse after members of an elite force known as RAID entered his flat.

But Interior Minister Claude Gueant said the 23-year-old had been found dead on the ground in a dramatic end to the lengthy standoff.

"The killer came out from the bathroom shooting very violently. The bursts of gunfire were frequent and hard," Gueant said. "A RAID officer who is used to this kind of thing told me that he had never seen such a violent assault.

"RAID officers of course tried to protect themselves, to return fire, and then in the end, Mohamed Merah jumped out of the window with a gun in his hand, continuing to fire. He was found dead on the ground."

After two police were wounded when they attempted to raid the apartment on Wednesday, authorities evacuated the building, turned off electricity in the neighborhood and settled in for the siege.

Prosecutors said 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.