By NBC News, msnbc.com and news services
Updated at 8:54 a.m. ET: Qatar-based regional 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'
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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