PARIS - The network Al Jazeera said Tuesday that it would not broadcast gruesome footage received by its Paris bureau that appears to show the killings of three Jewish schoolchildren, a rabbi, and three French soldiers in southwestern France earlier this month.

President Nicolas Sarkozy had objected strongly to the idea of airing the images.

In a statement on its English-language website, Al Jazeera, based in Qatar, said it will not air a video of the French shootings because it "did not add any information that was not already in public domain. It also did not meet the television station's code of ethics for broadcast.''

Zied Tarrouche, the network's Paris bureau chief, said earlier Tuesday that the footage showed the seven killings carried out by Mohammed Merah, who was killed Thursday in a shootout with the police in the southwestern French city of Toulouse.

As the police had earlier reported, Tarrouche said Merah apparently had a camera around his neck as he carried out the attacks. Tarrouche said Al Jazeera had given the video to the police.

Asked in a telephone interview if the footage was authentic, Tarrouche replied: "Unfortunately, yes. It was confirmed by the police on Monday.''

He said the footage of the murders is combined with music, religious chants, and the reading of Koranic verses.

"You hear the gunshots and the cries of the victims,'' he said.

Merah or an accomplice apparently mailed the video to Al Jazeera's Paris bureau on a USB computer key. It was accompanied by an unsigned letter in capital letters written in "sometimes bad French'' and purporting to be from Al Qaeda, Tarrouche said.

"There are a lot of things to think about,'' including the shock and pain the footage could cause the victims' families, in deciding whether to air it, Tarrouche said before the network announced its decision not to show it.

French prosecutors said they would not prevent a broadcast.

Sarkozy, however, said it should not be broadcast. "I call on the heads of the networks not to show the video under any circumstances, out of respect for the victims and respect for the republic,'' Sarkozy said in a speech to police officers and judges.

The French broadcasting regulator, the Conseil superieur de l'audiovisuel, also "invited'' networks not to show the footage.

During a 30-hour standoff last week with the police, Merah, 23, confessed to the series of shootings in Toulouse and nearby Montauban, saying they were meant to protest French military engagements in Muslim countries abroad, notably Afghanistan, the authorities said at the time. He said he also sought to avenge the deaths of Palestinian children.

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