Modern Day
Toulouse suffered the explosion of the AZF chemical plant, owned by the Société nationale des poudres et des explosifs, on September 21, 2001. The plant was totally destroyed and the explosion damaged many houses, schools, churches, monuments and shops. More than 20,000 flats were damaged. The plant is 8 km (5.0 mi) from the centre of Toulouse. Twenty nine people died and several thousand were injured. The root of the explosion was in a building containing ammonium nitrate.
In March 2012, Mohammed Merah opened fire at a Jewish school in Toulouse, killing a teacher and three children. A 8 year old girl was shot in the head at point blank range. President Nicolas Sarkozy said that it was "obvious" it was an anti-Semitic attack and that, "I want to say to all the leaders of the Jewish community, how close we feel to them. All of France is by their side." The Israeli Prime Minister condemned the "despicable anti-Semitic" murders. After a 32 hour siege and standoff with the police outside his house, and a French raid, Merah jumped off a balcony and was shot in the head and killed. Merah told police during the standoff that he intended to keep on attacking, and he loved death the way the police loved life. He also claimed connections with al-Qaeda.
Read more about this topic: History Of Toulouse
Famous quotes containing the words modern and/or day:
“How little do the most wonderful inventions of modern times detain us. They insult nature. Every machine, or particular application, seems a slight outrage against universal laws.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“But you must pay for conformity. All goes well as long as you run with conformists. But you, who are honest men in other particulars, know, that there is alive somewhere a man whose honesty reaches to this point also, that he shall not kneel to false gods, and, on the day when you meet him, you sink into the class of counterfeits.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)