Brunon Martin / AP
Police officers and firefighters gather at the site of a shooting outside a Jewish school in Toulouse, France, Monday.
By msnbc.com staff, NBC News and news services
Updated at 5:25 a.m ET: A man opened fire outside a Jewish school in Toulouse in southwestern France Monday, killing one adult and two children, a police source told Reuters.
The adult victim was believed to be a rabbi, al-Jazeera English TV reported. French newspaper Le Figaro (website in French) reported that the shooter fled the scene on a black scooter, according to NBC News.
Two other people were injured in the attack on private school Ozar Hatorah, which is located in Jolimont district of Toulouse, in the northeast of the city, a city official told The Associated Press.
French media reported that security was being tightened at all Jewish schools in the country.
The shootings come days after three soldiers were killed in two separate shootings in the same region by a man who escaped from the scene by scooter, Reuters reported.
The BFM TV news channel said that the gun used in the attack at the school was of the same caliber as that used in the soldiers' shootings.
France's chief rabbi, Gilles Bernheim, said he was "horrified" by the incident, according to BFM's website (in French).?
Israel's foreign ministry also expressed dismay at the incident.
"We are horrified by this attack and we trust the French authorities to shed full light on this tragedy and bring the perpetrators of these murders to justice," Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told the AFP news agency.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy was on his way to Toulouse Monday, NBC News said, citing local media reports, and French Interior Minister Claude Gueant broke off a visit in northeastern France to travel there, the police source told Reuters.
Investigators said Friday that the murders of two French paratroopers in southwest France?Thursday were linked to the killing of another soldier in Toulouse at the weekend, after they discovered the same weapon was used in both crimes.
Frederic Lancelot / AP
Police officers and soldiers are seen at the site of the shooting of three French soldiers in Mautauban, southern France, Thursday March 15.
Two uniformed French soldiers were shot dead and a third seriously injured by a masked gunman Thursday as they tried to withdraw money from a cash machine in the town of Montauban, close to the barracks of the 17th paratroop regiment.
At the weekend, a 30-year-old soldier in civilian clothes was shot dead in the nearby city of Toulouse.
Michel Valet, the public prosecutor of Toulouse, said authorities had not identified a suspect, or a motive for the killing.
"A link has been made with certainty between the two events in Toulouse and Montauban," he told a press conference on Friday.
NBC News, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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