Troops loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad assaulted rebel strongholds in Aleppo on Wednesday in one of their biggest ground attacks since rebels seized chunks of the country's biggest city three weeks ago.

Assad must win the battle for Aleppo if he is to reassert his authority nationwide, although diverting military forces for an offensive to regain control there has already allowed rebels to seize large swathes of countryside in the north.

Aleppo, at the heart of Syria's failing economy, has taken a fearful pounding since the 17-month-old uprising against Assad finally took hold in a city that had stayed mostly aloof.

---

"We have retreated, get out of here," a lone rebel fighter yelled at Reuters journalists as they arrived in Aleppo's Salaheddine district. Nearby checkpoints that had been manned by rebel fighters for the last week had disappeared.

Satellite images show Syria's bombardment of Aleppo, Amnesty says

Syrian state television said government forces had pushed into Salaheddine, killing most of the rebels there, and had entered other parts of the city in a new offensive.

It said dozens of "terrorists" were killed in the central district of Bab al-Hadeed, close to Aleppo's ancient citadel, and Bab al-Nayrab in the southeast.

'Situation is desperate' at makeshift hospitals on Syrian-Turkish border

But a rebel spokesman in Salaheddine, the southern gateway to Aleppo, denied Assad's troops had taken full control. "Syrian forces are positioned on one side of Salaheddine but they haven't entered and clashes are continuing," Abu Mohammed said.

According to the BBC, Wassel Ayub, a commander from the rebel Free Syrian Army, told the AFP news agency by phone: "For an hour and a half the Free Syrian Army has staged a counter-attack and reclaimed three streets out of five seized by regime forces."

Another FSA commander, Abdel Jabbar al-Oqaidi, told AFP news agency via Skype, according to the BBC: "It is not true the regime army has seized control of the district. It is true that there is a barbaric and savage attack."

One activist with the rebel Free Syrian Army, who asked not to be named, said insurgents had fallen back to the nearby neighborhood of Saif al-Dawla, which was now under fire from army tanks inside Salaheddine and from combat jets.

Reporting from Aleppo, Al Jazeera's correspondent Ahmed Zaidan said "a large number of people have been killed or injured in a fierce battle near Salaheddine in which advanced Russian tanks have been used by the government forces."

Also reporting from Aleppo, journalist Martin Chulov, of the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper tweeted Wednesday: "Spent afternoon in Salahedin [sic] #Aleppo. No regime troops inside. Battlelines have not shifted. Lots of shelling and helicopters."

Bodies recovered from destroyed home near Aleppo

The intensity of the conflict in Aleppo and elsewhere suggests that Assad remains determined to cling to power, with support from Iran and Russia, despite setbacks such as this week's defection of his newly installed prime minister.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based opposition watchdog, said more than 60 people had been killed across Syria on Wednesday, including 15 civilians in Aleppo. It put Tuesday's death toll at more than 240 nationwide.

Struggle for survival
Satellite images released by Amnesty International, obtained from July 23 to Aug.  1, showed more than 600 craters, probably from artillery shelling, dotting Aleppo and its environs.

"Amnesty is concerned that the deployment of heavy weaponry in residential areas in and around Aleppo will lead to further human rights abuses and grave breaches of international law," the human rights group said, adding that both sides might be held criminally accountable for failing to protect civilians.

The military's assaults in Aleppo follow its successful drive to retake neighborhoods seized by rebels in Damascus after a July 18 bomb attack that killed four of Assad's closest aides, including his feared brother-in-law Assef Shawkat.

On Monday Assad suffered the embarrassment of seeing his prime minister, Riyad Hijab, defect after only two months in office. Hijab apparently fled to Jordan with his family.

Yet even such high-profile defections and outside diplomatic pressure seem unlikely to deflect Assad from what has become a bitter struggle for survival between mostly Sunni Muslim rebels and a ruling system dominated by the president's minority Alawite sect, an esoteric offshoot of Shiite Islam.

Jordan's King Abdullah said he believed Assad would stick to his guns. "He believes that he is in the right. I think that the regime feels that it has no alternative but to continue," the monarch told U.S. broadcaster CBS.

He said Assad might try to carve out an Alawite enclave if he could not control of all Syria, describing such a territorial breakup as the "worst-case scenario" for its neighbors.

"If Syria then implodes on itself that would create problems that would take us decades to come back from," Abdullah said.

Assad has little sympathy in Jordan or other Sunni-ruled Arab nations, but he can count on staunch support from Iran, whose Shiite leaders see Syria, along with Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah movement, as a pillar of an "axis of resistance" against the United States and Israel.

Sarkozy urges action
Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy called on Wednesday for rapid international intervention in Syria, likening its conflict to the early days of war in Libya in which he mobilized NATO-led action that helped rebels oust Moammar Gadhafi.

Breaking a long silence since losing May's presidential election to Socialist Francois Hollande, Sarkozy said he had spoken at length to Syrian opposition leader Abdulbaset Sieda this week and they agreed on the need for foreign intervention in the uprising against Assad.

"They noted a total convergence in their views on the seriousness of the Syrian crisis as well as the need for rapid action by the international community to avoid massacres," said the statement signed by Sarkozy and Sieda, who is president of the Istanbul-based Syrian National Council.

In contrast with Libyan conflict, Western powers are wary of intervention in Syria due to Assad's alliances with Russia and Iran, and Syria's position at the heart of sectarian divisions that radiate across the Middle East.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Updated at 9:10 p.m. ET: French President Nicolas Sarkozy has conceded defeat in France's presidential elections, saying he called challenger Francois Hollande to wish him "good luck" as the country's new leader.

Sarkozy thanked his supporters Sunday and said he did his best to win a second term, despite widespread anger at his handling of the economy.

He said "I take responsibility ... for the defeat."

---

Sarkozy faced voters' anger over austerity Sunday in a presidential run-off expected to replace him with Socialist rival Francois Hollande, with far-reaching consequences for efforts to fight Europe's debt crisis.

The election outcome could also have an impact on how long French troops stay in Afghanistan and how France exercises its military and diplomatic muscle around the world.

"I will be president of all," Hollande proclaimed.

"There is only one France tonight, reunited together with the same destiny."

No child of the republic will be abandoned or discriminated against.

Exuberant crowds gathered at the Socialist Party headquarters in Paris even before the official results started coming in, while Sarkozy supporters were preparing to see their man become France's first one-term president since Valery Giscard d'Estaing lost to Socialist Francois Mitterrand in 1981.

President Obama called Hollande on Sunday to congratulate him on his victory. Obama invited Hollande to visit the White House before this month's G-8 summit at Camp David, Md. Hollande is also expected to attend the NATO summit in Chicago later this month.

Hollande, 57, voted in his electoral fiefdom of Tulle in central France on Sunday. Asked that evening about unconfirmed reports that he was leading and whether he saw that as encouraging, he told a small number of reporters: "Yes, but they're only estimates. They are just starting to unload the ballot boxes now."

French law bars the publication of results before all polling stations have closed to avoid swaying the outcome, and the fine for doing that is a little more than $98,000.

Hollande campaign official Francois Kalfon was enthusiastic well before voting stations closed. He predicted a big victory party Sunday night on the Place de la Bastille, the iconic plaza associated with the French Revolution.

"There are reasonable reasons to think that there will be a new president after the election tonight," Kalfon said. He said his confidence was based on polls conducted before voting day.

Six European countries were holding elections for various levels of government Sunday.

Aside from France, they include Greece, where the results of a parliamentary vote are seen as critical to the country's prospects for pulling out of a deep financial crisis felt in world markets. A state election in Germany and local elections in Italy were seen as tests of support for the national government's policies. Serbia and Armenia also were holding elections.

Sarkozy, 57, accompanied by wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, voted at midday in Paris' 16th arrondissement. Scores of television cameras surrounded the couple, and members of the public could be heard chanting "Sarkozy! President!"

Asked Friday what he would do if he loses, Sarkozy said simply: "There will be a handover of power."

"The nation follows its course," he continued. "The nation is stronger than the destiny of the men who serve it."

The outcome of the French presidential vote could weigh heavily on talks about the European debt crisis.

Hollande has promised more government spending and higher taxes — including a 75-percent income tax on the rich — and wants to re-negotiate a European treaty on trimming budgets to avoid more debt crises of the kind facing Greece. That would complicate relations with Germany's Angela Merkel, who championed the treaty alongside Sarkozy.

Under Sarkozy, France pledged to rein in its spending while the rest of 17 countries that use the euro embark on a strict period of belt-tightening. In France, that has included programs designed to reduce government employment.

Sarkozy, disliked by many voters for his handling of the economy and brash personality, promised he could produce a surprise victory on Sunday.Turnout was a surprisingly high 79 percent in the first round April 22, and polls suggested that Sarkozy's best chance of an upset would come from even greater voter turnout Sunday.

Hollande has benefited from anti-Sarkozy fervor, with some voters saying their choice was more a vote against him than one for Hollande.

Stephanie Debaye, 32, said she was voting for Sarkozy's departure.

"On behalf of my compatriots, I felt quite insulted. He was so aggressive. I hope things will calm down," Debaye said outside a polling station.

Another Paris voter highlighted this anti-Sarkozy vote, saying she's backing Hollande, even though his program is "suicidal."

"He'll raise the minimum wage, increase civil servants. But France is already in debt," said Florence Macrez. His fiscal reform project will only increase the pressure especially on the middle class, she added.

Hollande beat Sarkozy by about 500,000 votes in the first round of voting on April 22, in which 10 candidates competed for the job of running the nuclear-armed country with a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council for the next five years.

Sarkozy's critics have often faulted him for his brash style, alleged chumminess with the rich, and inability to reverse France's tough economic fortunes and nearly double-digit jobless rate.

NBC's Nancy Ing contributed to this report from The Associated Press.

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Updated at 1:40 a.m. on May 7: France crowned Francois Hollande as its first Socialist president in nearly two decades in an election on Sunday.

Originally published on May 4: Understated, bespectacled and often clad in dull gray suits, he is nicknamed "Flamby" -- after a popular brand of caramel pudding. Meet Francois Hollande, the likely next president of France.

Largely unknown outside his own country, he is ahead in opinion polls by five to 10 points against the incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy and is poised to become France’s first Socialist president since Francois Mitterrand, whom he served as an economic adviser.

---

The 57-year-old owes his candidacy to the downfall of the former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who had been the runaway favorite for socialists until sex scandals ended his professional and political career.

However, in a feisty TV debate Wednesday with Sarkozy, Hollande showed voters he is far from characterless.

During the debate, which lasted nearly three hours, Hollande claimed Sarkozy, 57, was using the global economic crisis as an excuse for not delivering on his promises.

"It's never your fault,” Hollande said. “You always have a scapegoat. 'It's not me -- it's the crisis that hit me.'"

Left-wing mom, right-wing dad
Born into a middle-class Catholic family in the city of Rouen, Normandy, Hollande’s views were shaped mostly by his social worker mother; he often disagreed with his father’s far-right views.

The young Hollande took an academic path well-trod by many French politicians, attending the Institute of Political Studies (Sciences-Po) and later the École Nationale d'Administration (ENA), both in France’s version of the Ivy League, which produced seven of the past 12 prime ministers, according to The Economist.

He graduated from ENA in 1980, along with Segolene Royal, the woman who would become his partner of more than 20 years, mother of his four children and Socialist presidential candidate in 2007. That year, the two called it quits and Royal went on to lose to Sarkozy in the run-off.

Sarkozy fails to floor Hollande in France election television debate

Hollande and Royal never married, and for the past few years his partner has been French political journalist Valerie Trierweiler. She has said she expects to remain a journalist and a working mother if she becomes France’s first lady.

His love life may have been complicated, but Hollande's commitment to politics has been constant, and he proudly puts it on display in a campaign video posted on his website that touts his 30 years in politics. Set to a piano soundtrack, the roughly three-minute clip looks at “the victories, the defeats and the historic moments.”

“Nothing was given to me, nothing was entrusted to me, nothing was assigned to me,” Hollande is heard saying. “Everything I have, I took by right.”

'A rather dangerous man'
He now wants to take the presidency, and some worry about what that may mean for the future of France and Europe in general.

“Mr. Hollande evinces a deep, anti-business attitude,” writes Britain’s pro-business The Economist, adding that his hostility to change could undermine the Eurozone’s determination to pursue painful reforms that could help save the euro. “That makes him a rather dangerous man.”

Despite The Economist’s anxieties, the election is more of a referendum on how Sarkozy and his government have handled the economic crisis.

With unemployment at a 12-year high and France stripped of its AAA status by one credit rating agency, the Bank of France offered no solace for Sarkozy. Figures for growth were revised downward -- news that Hollande could benefit from, as he promises to forge a new economic direction for Europe with a drive to spend and thus promote growth.

This plan is in stark contrast to Sarkozy’s policy of financial discipline and austerity, a solution to the financial crisis also championed by Germany’s Angela Merkel.

Despite his promises of less austerity, Hollande has pledged to balance the budget in 2017, Bloomberg reported, while Sarkozy promised to reach the target a year earlier.

"We will keep to the fixed plan of reducing our public deficit to 3 percent [of GDP] in 2013," Hollande said in an interview with La Tribune. "It's France's word."

One of the ways he plans to achieve this is through higher taxes, including a 75 percent rate on income over 1 million euros ($1.3 million).

Some analysts, however, worry that weak growth will derail his goal and think Hollande should turn to sensible cuts in spending instead.

"People voting for Sarkozy are thinking about somebody who can lead in Europe and handle the crisis,” Dominique Reynie, professor at the Sciences Po, told Reuters. “Those who vote for Hollande are thinking about their own purchasing power and social well-being."

Serge Raffy, chief-editor of the French newspaper Nouvel Observateur and author of “Francois Hollande: A secret itinerary,” noted there was little enthusiasm and passion in “desperately rational” Hollande’s candidacy. 

“At least it didn’t cause illusions from the outset,” Raffy writes. “Francois Hollande will not disappoint if he wins. He can only surprise us.”

Reuters contributed to this report.

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PARIS - French President Nicolas Sarkozy made a last-ditch appeal to far-right voters on Thursday after failing to land a knockout blow in a heated televised debate with Socialist rival Francois Hollande before Sunday's decisive runoff.

Hollande, ahead in opinion polls by six to 10 points, was calm and unflappable during the nearly three-hour debate on Wednesday while the conservative Sarkozy, struggling to catch up with the moderate social democrat, was often agitated and tense.

---

Commentators said the confrontation, watched by 17.8 million people out of an electorate of 44.5 million, was no game-changer and probably only reinforced voters' opinions in a contest that has been as much about style and personality as substance.

"It was a draw but as Mr Hollande started as favorite, he remains the favorite," wrote Francoise Fressoz in an editorial in Le Monde. "Mr Sarkozy did not manage to destabilize him, which was his objective from the start."

France's election battle moves from hearts to heads

Television commentators said Sarkozy had performed "like a boxer" in Wednesday's debate and Hollande "like a judo fighter", using flashes of wit and interjections to unbalance his rival.

"Hollande presides over the debate," left-wing Liberation wrote on its front page, while the right-leaning Le Figaro, with a headline "High Tension", emphasized the bitterness of the exchanges. It noted that every euro zone leader to seek re-election since 2008 had lost, but said divisions in the French left and Hollande's outdated policies gave Sarkozy a chance.

Hollande, 57, was confident and relaxed in the early exchanges of Wednesday's contest, saying he aimed to be "the president of justice" and "the president of unity".

He said Sarkozy, also 57 and in office since 2007, had divided the French people and was using the global economic crisis as an excuse for broken promises. "With you it's very simple: it's never your fault," Hollande said.

Sarkozy, fighting for his political life, repeatedly accused his opponent of lying about economic figures and reeled off reams of statistics in an attempt to swamp his adversary.

4-month presidential campaign with no television ads? Welcome to France

Deriding Hollande's pledge to be a "normal president", the president said: "Your normality is not up to the challenge."

Sarkozy, being punished for rife unemployment and a brash manner, is the most unpopular president to run for re-election. He was the first in recent history to lose a first-round vote, with Hollande benefiting from the anti-incumbent sentiment that has swept 11 euro zone leaders from office since 2009.

The streets of Paris were unusually deserted with many people staying home to watch the debate, although some chose to follow the clash on television screens at their local cafe.

"It has been 50-50. There is no clear winner," said Jacques Dufoix, 36, a computer engineer, after watching the debate in a central Paris sports bar. "I don't think this is going to change the way anyone votes. People have already made up their minds." 

Reuters and msnbc.com's Alastair Jamieson contributed to this report.

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With fewer than 10 days until France casts its votes in the first round of the presidential election, Nicolas Sarkozy’s poll lead is shrinking, suggesting his deft handling of last month’s shootings in Toulouse won’t be enough to protect him from anger at the state of the economy.

Three opinion polls showed the incumbent's narrow lead over challenger Francois Hollande is steady or shrinking for the April 22 first round, and Sarkozy is still expected to lose the subsequent May 6 runoff.

---

"He’s been trailing Hollande in the second round pretty consistently," Justin Vaïsse, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told msnbc.com. "It’s hard to see where the reservoir of votes would come from to make him win."

Sarkozy saw his lead for the first ballot slip to half a percentage point from two points a week ago in a poll by Ipsos Logica, with 29 percent support to Hollande's 28.5 percent. 

The same poll showed Hollande retaining a 10-point lead in voting intentions for the May 6 runoff with 55 percent to Sarkozy's 45 percent, unchanged from a week earlier.

An Ifop Fiducial poll showed Sarkozy with 28.5 percent to Hollande's 27 percent in round one, unchanged over the last month - but Hollande's lead in the run-off narrowed to six points from eight points two weeks ago.

A third poll by Harris Interactive gave Sarkozy a one-point lead in the first round at 28 percent to Hollande's 27, down from 3 points a week earlier. It too put Hollande ahead of Sarkozy 53 to 47 in the runoff.

All three polls indicated far-right candidate Marine Le Pen had strengthened her position in third place, ahead of hard left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon in fourth.

The campaign kicked off on April 9, bringing political ads to radio and TV stations and giant posters to the streets. But the race started months ago for the 10 candidates, and some experts say the most interesting days are already behind us.

"Overall it’s been a boring campaign," Vaïsse said, adding that over the past few weeks the race has been bogged down by small issues such as halal meat and the cost of earning a driving license. In comparison, the 2007 race that Sarkozy won focused on issues such as unemployment and European disunity, he said.

Polls show the electorate is growing weary of the rhetoric as well. A recent national survey found 32 percent of respondents don't plan on hitting the polls, a figure that Jonathan Laurence, nonresident senior fellow at Brookings and term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, says is atypical. The turnout in the 2007 elections was about 80 percent.

The shift in campaign rhetoric occurred early this year, when Sarkozy went from talking about his important role in the partnership with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in saving the Eurozone to discussing immigration and threatening to pull France out of Schengen, Europe's open border zone.

He went from being the "locomotive of Europe" to playing the anti-Europe card, Vaïsse said.

For voters, issues such as unemployment, the nation's debt and deficit and education are bigger priorities than Islam and immigration, Vaïsse added. But for the right-wing voters Sarkozy is trying to coax to his side, they are seen as essential.

That conversation took center stage following a deadly shooting in Toulouse, where Mohamed Merah, a 23-year-old Frenchman killed three Jewish schoolchildren, a rabbi and three French paratroopers in three separate attacks. The Toulouse shootings allowed Sarkozy to act presidential, Laurence said.

His handling of the crisis was reflected by a slight uptick in the polls, but Vaïsse said the Toulouse effect is unlikely to make a big difference in the long run.

In the end, the election is a referendum on how Sarkozy and his government handled the economic crisis, Laurence said.

With unemployment at a 12-year high and France stripped of its AAA status by one credit rating agency, the Bank of France offered no redemption for Sarkozy's economic record.

Figures for growth were revised downward, a trend that Hollande could benefit from. Sarkozy advocates financial discipline and austerity, but that's not enough to solve the growth problem, Vaïsse said.

Hollande has pledged to balance the budget in 2017, Bloomberg reported, while Sarkozy promised to reach the target a year earlier. According to the report, the country's public deficit stood at 5.2 percent in 2011.

"We will keep to the fixed plan of reducing our public deficit to 3 percent [of GDP] in 2013," Hollande said in an interview with La Tribune. "It's France's word."

Hollande said he would finance his plan of increasing spending by 20 billion euros by repealing 29 billion euros of tax breaks for the rich.

While the race for re-election is an uphill battle for Sarkozy, there remains a small possibility he can scrape his way to a second term in office if he wins in the first round and picks up some support from the centrist candidate's electorate, Vaïsse said.

"Frankly, apart from that scenario, it’s hard to see how he’ll be able to make it," he added.

Reuters contributed to this report. 

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French authorities said on Friday they feared a serial killer was on the loose after a gunman shot dead a 47-year-old mother near her home in a Paris suburb, using a weapon employed in three other killings in the same area within the last five months.

"This series of killings deserves our maximum attention and we are putting all our resources into this affair," Interior Minister Claude Gueant told Europe 1 radio.

In each of the four shootings, the first of which was in November, a lone gunman used the same 7.65 mm caliber semi-automatic pistol, prosecutors said. The latest shooting took place on Thursday when a gunman on a motorbike struck.

---

"It was a pistol, a semi-automatic pistol," said Marie-Suzanne Le Queau, public prosecutor in Evry, a commune in the southern suburbs of Paris. "This element alone is not enough to affirm at this stage that it is all part of the same affair."

There were obvious similarities in the way the latest three killings were carried out in February, March and April, but no clear link to the first killing in November, she added.

Around 100 investigators were working on the case and police were examining several leads, she said. The woman was a widow and had an 18-year-old son, Le Monde reported.

The motives of the murders remain a mystery, Le Monde wrote, as the last two victims appear to have no connection with the first two and come from very different backgrounds.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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The gunman who claimed responsibility for France's worst terror attacks in years was buried Thursday in a Toulouse cemetery, ending a tortured debate over what to do with the body of a man the president called a "monster."   

France is still reeling from the killings of three Jewish schoolchildren, a rabbi and three paratroopers that revived worries about Islamist extremism and shook up the French presidential campaign.   

Mohamed Merah, a 23-year-old Frenchman, was buried Thursday in the Muslim section of a cemetery in the Toulouse neighborhood of Cornebarrieu. About 20 men attended the ceremony, hiding their faces from reporters gathered outside.   

"It's all over. We aren't talking about it anymore. He is in his grave," Abdallah Zekri of the French Muslim Council, or CFCM, said afterward.   

---

Those attending the ceremony were mostly young friends of Merah's from the housing projects where he grew up, Zekri said.    Zekri, who was present for the burial, led protracted negotiations in recent days with Merah's family, Algerian authorities and Toulouse authorities over where to bury him.   

Police say Merah filmed himself killing seven people in a spate of attacks earlier this month. Merah, who espoused radical Islam and said he had links to al-Qaida, was shot in the head after a standoff with police last week in the southern city of Toulouse.   

Was Islamist gunman Mohamed Merah an informant for French spies?

His brother is in custody on suspected complicity and police are looking for a potential third man who might have helped.   

Merah's father said that he wanted Mohamed buried in a family plot in the Medea region of Algeria, a solution that seemed to satisfy French officials uncomfortable with the question of what to do with his remains.   

With that plan in mind, Merah's body was brought to the Toulouse airport Thursday, and his mother had been expecting to accompany it to Algiers on a flight later in the day.   

But Algerian authorities refused for "reasons of public order," Zekri said.   

Plans were made to bury Merah at the Muslim cemetery in Toulouse -- but the Toulouse mayor objected and tried to delay it another day. Sarkozy, on the campaign trail for next month's presidential elections, intervened.   

Father of Toulouse gunman wants to sue France for killing son

"Let him be buried, and let's not create a debate about this," Sarkozy said.   

Under pressure from the central government in Paris, the mayor relented, and agreed to an evening internment.   

Attention will now focus on the investigation.   

Merah's brother has been handed preliminary charges of alleged complicity in preparing the killings, though his lawyer insists that Abdelkader Merah had no idea what his brother was plotting.   

Abdelkader Merah told investigators that a third man helped the Merah brothers steal a motorbike used later in the killings, two police officials said Thursday. Merah did not give the name of the other man.   

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to be publicly named.   

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Updated at 8:54 a.m. ET: Qatar-based news channel al-Jazeera has pledged not to air footage of the killings carried out in France by an al-Qaida-inspired gunman after President Nicolas Sarkozy pleaded with broadcasters not to show the disturbing scenes.

France is still coming to terms with Mohamed Merah's close-range shootings of three Jewish children, a rabbi and three soldiers in the south of the country.

The killings were filmed by Merah using a camera attached to his body, BBC News reported.

---

"I call on executives of all TV stations that may have the images in their possession not to broadcast them under any pretext out of respect for the victims and for France," Sarkozy said following a meeting with police chiefs in Paris.

Al-Jazeera, which received a memory stick containing the footage, later announced it would not broadcast the video because it "did not add any information that was not already in public domain" and also "did not meet the television station's code of ethics for broadcast."

Sarkozy: Some Muslim clerics 'not welcome on French soil'

Zied Tarrouche, al-Jazeera's bureau chief in Paris, told French chanel BFM TV he had watched the video and it showed all of the killing.

"You see all of the attacks carried out in Toulouse and Montauban, that's to say the murder of the first soldier, then the three soldiers and finally the attack on the school," he was quoted as telling the channel in a BBC report.

"You hear the voice of the person who carried out the killings," he added. "You also hear the victims' cries. My feelings are those of any human being who sees horrible things."

The BBC said Mr Tarrouche told the channel the video also contained a mixture of religious songs, readings and Koranic verses.

The package sent to al-Jazeera was dated Wednesday, March 21 - the day that police surrounded Merah in his apartment in the city of Toulouse after a massive manhunt, according to a report in the Parisien daily newspaper.

French special forces shot the young Islamist the following day after a 30-hour siege.

"Investigators are trying to find out whether the letter was posted Tuesday night by Mohamed Merah himself or by an accomplice Wednesday morning," the newspaper wrote.

The Paris prosecutor in charge of the case said last week that the Merah had filmed each of the shootings.

The killings, and subsequent calls for tougher measures to monitor Islamic extremism, come a month before the French presidential election.

NBC News, Reuters and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.

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French President Nicolas Sarkozy has denied that former Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi gave his 2007 presidential campaign $65 million, the Financial Times reported.

The French investigative site Mediapart reported Monday that it found a document showing that after Sarkozy connected with Gadhafi through a notorious Libyan businessman, he received transfers from Swiss and Panamanian bank accounts. Mediapart was co-founded in 2008 by one of France’s most well-known investigative reporters.

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Last year, Gadhafi’s son, Saif al-Islam, made a similar allegation during an interview with the Euronews TV Channel, the Guardian reported. Al-Islam, frustrated that Sarkozy supported the opposition to his father's regime, threatened to divulge the details of bank transfers to Sarkozy's campaign.

The Financial Times reported that the document had not been proven to be authentic.

Sarkozy’s opponent in this race, François Hollande, has demanded that Sarkozy explain the document, the Guardian reported.

“Well then the son should just go ahead and produce them,” Sarkozy said on French television, according to the Financial Times.

The businessman, Ziad Takieedine, also denied the allegations.

“There was not one bit of any finance from Libya to France or from Gadhafi to Sarkozy. Nothing,” Takieedine said.

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French President Nicolas Sarkozy vowed during a TV debate on Tuesday to halve the number of immigrants and impose a minimum tax on profits of big listed companies as he sought to bolster support for his re-election bid in April.

Sarkozy, grilled by veteran Socialist Laurent Fabius and journalists for three hours on the primetime show, defended his record on tax reform, public finances, and unemployment - which rose on his watch as economic crisis battered the world.

The conservative leader, lagging behind Socialist challenger Francois Hollande in the polls, was also made to apologize for old gaffes and explain his personality traits in a lengthy section about awkward moments in his early presidency.

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Sarkozy, said by critics to pander too much to the far right as he seeks to maximize support for the April 22 first round, said he would cut the number of immigrants to 100,000 a year from 180,000 and tighten up the rules on foreigners' access to French nationality and benefits.

The debate with Fabius - a former finance and prime minister who is destined for a top job if Hollande wins - comes as Sarkozy is struggling in opinion polls. Having gained a few points at the start of his campaign, Sarkozy slipped back last week as he suffered setbacks on the campaign trail.

Hollande, who launched his campaign months before Sarkozy, regained momentum by proposing a 75 percent tax rate on earnings above a million euros, a move 61 percent of French people would support, a poll by TNS Sofres and Mediaprism showed.

Quizzed about the economy, Sarkozy said that while Germany remained a model to be emulated, France had held up better than much of Europe in the crisis.

In a tense and barbed debate, Sarkozy accused his opponent of using artistic license when citing unemployment figures.

"If unemployment exploded in so many countries, was it my fault it rose in France or did something happen?" Sarkozy said. "If you didn't include temporary workers in jobless figures when you were finance minister, why would you do it now?"

In a long section about his personal style, Sarkozy said he regretted episodes such as feting his 2007 election victory in a swanky Paris nightspot. Asked about his personal failings, he listed them as being spontaneous, emotional and sentimental.

"When people freely insult me, I don't like it," he said, explaining why he had more than once snapped at members of the public. His biggest strength was his energy, he said.

It was Sarkozy's first political debate of the election campaign, following an able performance by Hollande at the end of January against Foreign Minister Alain Juppe.

Sarkozy, who is set to deliver his biggest campaign speech yet in the Paris suburbs on Sunday, said his first foreign trip if re-elected would be to visit his German counterpart in Berlin, after which he would go to the Middle East to discuss peace talk possibilities with Israeli and Palestinian officials.

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