President Nicolas Sarkozy

Khaled Kelkal Dept: France reeled at the worst such attacks since a bombing campaign involving another young son of Algerian parents from another rough provincial suburb, Khaled Kelkal from Lyon, killed eight people in 1995. President Nicolas Sarkozy put his re-election campaign on hold to call for unity. Tens of thousands of people marched silently in memory of the victims, according to Globe and Mail. I m going to tell you one thing: he was a kid from this neighbourhood and we support his family no matter what people say on TV, said one middle-aged mother of Algerian origin who said she had known Mr. Merah when he was a child in Les Izards and for days, Toulouse lived in fear of the scooter killer . But in Les Izards, the 1960s housing project where Mr. Merah, 23, felt most at home, the reaction to his rampage has been one of anxious defiance of outsiders trying to peer into what seems like a closed world, cut off from elegant downtown Toulouse by its poverty, by crime and, locals say, by racial discrimination. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.