French police surround suspect in Toulouse shootings The suspect had been under surveillance, the interior minister says The gunman was tracked down via computer sleuthing, he says He killed seven people, police believe, reportedly to avenge Palestinian children's deaths The Palestinian prime minister rejects a link between the crimes and his people Toulouse, France (CNN) -- About 300 police officers surrounded an apartment in the south of France on Wednesday, trying to coax a man whom authorities called a self-styled al Qaeda jihadist to surrender after a series of shootings that left seven people dead. Soon after special operations police mounted their raid in Toulouse at 3:30 a.m., shots rang out from inside, wounding two officers, police said. The man later threw a handgun out the window, but he has other guns, Interior Minister Claude Gueant said. As the standoff stretched to its sixth hour, Gueant said he expected the suspect to give himself up in the afternoon. Gueant said the suspect had told him that, adding that he hoped the suspect was telling the truth. But the suspect later broke off communications with the police, Gueant told reporters. A prosecution official in Paris named the suspect as Mohammed Merah, 23. He was born in Toulouse, said Elisabeth Allanic, a magistrate at the Prosecutors Office. He had been under surveillance by French intelligence for years, the interior minister said. He had "already committed certain infractions, some with violence," Gueant said. He was in a Toulouse court February 24 for causing an accident with injuries and driving without a license and served some time in jail, CNN affiliate BFM-TV reported. Gueant said the suspect had a car containing more weapons near his apartment. The suspect is accused of killing seven people in the last 10 days: a rabbi and three children at a Jewish school on Monday, and three soldiers of north African origin who had recently returned from Afghanistan in two earlier incidents. As the siege went on, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he would meet with Muslim and Jewish leaders and asked the nation "to unite together to show that terrorism will not be able to fracture our national community. France must be stronger than ever in national unity. We owe this to the victims who were assassinated in cold blood," he said. The suspect's lawyer, Christian Etelin, said Merah went to Afghanistan two years ago. "He claims to be a jihadist and says he belongs to al Qaeda," Gueant told reporters at the scene. He wanted to avenge the Palestinian children and take revenge on the French army because of its foreign interventions. Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad strongly rejected using his people as a justification for the French killings, calling them a "cowardly terrorist attack." "It is time for those criminals to stop exploiting the name of Palestine through their terrorist actions," Fayyad said in a statement. The suspect belongs to a group called Forsane Alizza, or Knights of Glory, Gueant said. The French government banned the group in January for trying to recruit people to fight in Afghanistan. Announcing the ban on the group, Gueant said it is "unacceptable that in our country a group is training people for armed struggle." The group issued a "chilling warning" on its Facebook page before it was banned earlier this year, calling on supporters to attack Americans, Jews and French soldiers, terror expert Sajjan Gohel said. This month's shooting spree, which targeted minorities, prompted France to put the region on scarlet alert, the highest level in the country. Throughout the standoff, President Sarkozy remained in constant communication with the interior minister, the presidential palace said. CNN's Aliza Kassim, Stephanie Halasz, Dheepthi Namasivayam, Anna Pritchard and Kareem Khadder contributed to this report.