New Footage From Inside French Gunman's Flat

New footage has emerged from inside the bullet-riddled apartment of a suspected spree killer gunned down after a shootout with French police.

Mohammed Merah was accused of killing seven people, including three schoolchildren , in southern France.

Merah died after more than 300 bullets were fired after being cornered at his flat in Toulouse, following a 32-hour siege .

Meanwhile the mother of Merah has been released without charge.

A judicial official said Zoulika Aziri was freed on Friday but Merah's older brother Abdelkader, along with Abdelkader's girlfriend, remain in police custody.

Officers are trying to work out if Merah , a 23-year-old French citizen of Algerian descent, had acted alone in allegedly carrying out three separate shootings earlier this month in Toulouse and Montauban.

Under French law, preliminary charges will have to be filed for either of the two in custody, who have been transferred from Toulouse to Paris for further questioning, is detained longer than the weekend.

A police union spokesman said detectives had gathered evidence to suggest Abdelkader may have helped his brother in the attacks, where three soldiers, a rabbi and three Jewish children were killed by a gunman on a motorbike.

Merah had claimed to have links to al Qaeda - but an official said there was no evidence the terror network had trained him or been in contact with him.

The 23-year-old was killed in a shootout with police after armed officers stormed the flat in Toulouse where he had been holed up for more than 30 hours.

A post-mortem examination showed he was hit by more than 20 bullets .

Officers and prosecutors have said Abdelkader is a radical Islamist and that traces of what could be an explosive material had been found in his car.

The 29-year-old said he was "proud" of his sibling's actions, according to police, and admitted being present when the scooter used in the killings was stolen.

However, he also said he knew nothing of his brother's criminal intentions.

Abdelkader was questioned several years ago about alleged connections to a network sending Toulouse-area youths to Iraq , but no action was brought against him at the time.

Meanwhile, the woman whose rabbi husband, Jonathan Sandler, and two young children were shot dead outside a Jewish school on Monday issued an online plea in the memory of her loved ones.

In a letter published on the website of the Orthodox Jewish Chabad movement, Eva Sandler wrote the "spirit of the Jewish people can never be extinguished".

She urged all Jewish parents to honour her dead family members by loving their children and teaching them to love "their fellow man".

Also, the pregnant girlfriend of one of the dead soldiers will wed her partner posthumously, a family lawyer said after consultation with the French president's office.

Paratrooper Abel Chennouf was shot dead at a cash machine.

His partner, 21-year-old Caroline Monet, is applying for permission to marry him at an official ceremony in a few weeks' time.