French Interior Minister Gueant arrives
French Interior Minister Gueant arrivesReuters

Three loud explosions have been heard at the scene of the siege in Toulouse, where an Al Qaeda-linked terrorist is trapped in a building. An ambulance was seen by witnesses racing through a cordon immediately after.

However, a police source told FranceInfo the explosions were stun grenades designed to destabilize the terrorist and make him lose his bearings. A similar series of explosions were detonated overnight last night although the source of the blasts was unclear.

French Interior Minister Claude Gueant arrived at the scene early Thursday morning, along with other officials. Gueant has expressed questions over whether, in fact, Mohammed Merah is still alive. There has been no contact with him in nearly 10 hours, and police fear he may have booby-trapped the apartment. Police are hoping to capture the terrorist alive nevertheless, in order to ensure that he "faces justice."

The 23-year-old terrorist has been holed up for more than 24 hours in the biggest manhunt in recent French history, after murdering seven people over the past week. Some 300 special ops police officers are surrounding the building in which Merah is holed up. 

Police have infrared imaging trained on the apartment, the BBC reported, enabling them to see whether anyone is moving around inside. All power and gas supplies to the building have been shut off.  Yesterday Merah fired at police through the door, wounding three officers, when they tried to storm the apartment Wednesday.

A French citizen of Algerian descent, the terrorist bragged overnight to a journalist that he has "brought France to its knees" and showed regret only that he had not had time to kill more people. 

Merah was jailed in Afghanistan several years ago for “planting bombs,” and said he was trained in Pakistan.

He gunned down a teacher, Rabbi Yonatan Sandler, his two young sons ages 3 and 6, and the 8-year-old daughter of the principal in a cold-blooded attack at the Otzar HaTorah Jewish day school on Monday. The previous week he murdered three French Muslim paratroopers in a similar manner.