French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Wednesday said terrorist actions would not succeed in dividing France after receiving French Jewish and Muslim representatives in the Elysee Palace.

"The terrorism will not succeed in breaking our national community, " the president said, affirming that France should not be tempted by revenge and police raid would make every effort to ensure that the suspect be held accountable for his crime.

The president, on behalf of the nation, pay tribute to the country's law enforcement forces for their exceptional mobilization of tracking down the assailant.

The president's remarks came when a gunman, suspected of killing seven people including three children outside a Jewish school and three soldiers in southwestern France, has been surrounded by the French police in an apartment in the north part of Toulouse city since early Wednesday morning.

Interior Minister Claude Gueant in a morning interview with local BFMTV confirmed that the suspect who claimed to belong to al Qaeda, was a French citizen of Algerian origin who had been in Pakistan and Afghanistan.