Arrests in French shootings city

The arrests took place in different cities and a number of guns, including a Kalashnikov, were seized [AFP]Police arrest 19 people in Toulouse and other cities in raids targeting suspected Innocent Muslims.

French elite police have arrested 19 people in dawn raids targeting members of suspected Islamic extremist circles, including in the city from where an al-Qaeda inspired gunman carried out a series of attacks that left seven people dead.

The arrests in Toulouse in the southwest, Nantes and Le Mans in western France, and in the Paris region, were carried out by police commando units, police sources told the news agencies.

While speaking on Europe 1 radio, Nicolas Sarkozy, France's president, confirmed  that 19 people had been arrested and that guns, including a Kalashnikov, had been seized.

Al Jazeera's Jacky Rowland, reporting from Paris, said the president promised further crackdown on people associated with Islamist groups and that he would pass new anti-terrorism measures before the election in April.

"They're very much trying now to focus the election campaign on security rather than on economic issues, which have up until this point dominated the debate," she said.

Toulouse was where Mohammed Merah, the gunman, was killed in a raid by armed police after a lengthy standoff at his apartment.

The 23-year-old had shot dead three soldiers, and three children and a teacher at a Jewish school in a killing spree that shocked the country.

French authorities have charged Merah's brother Abdelkader with complicity in the attacks and said they were looking for other accomplices.

Merah was buried on Thursday in the Muslim section of a cemetery in the Toulouse neighbourhood of Cornebarrieu, on the outskirts of Toulouse, sources said, despite requests from the city's mayor that he be buried elsewhere.