Toulouse shootings 'a little' like 9/11 for France: Sarkozy

PARIS - Agence France-Presse

France's President and UMP party candidate for the 2012 French presidential elections Nicolas Sarkozy shakes hands with supporters after delivering a speech at a campaign rally in Nimes, March 29, 2012. Reuters photo

President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Friday that France was shaken by an Islamist gunman's shootings in and around Toulouse, likening the trauma from the murders to that of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.

"What must be understood is that the trauma of Montauban and Toulouse is profound for our country, a little -- I don't want to compare the horrors -- a little like the trauma that followed in the United States and in New York after the September 11, 2001 attacks," he told Europe 1 radio.