European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton compared the children who were murdered in Monday's shooting attack on a Jewish school in Toulouse, France, with children killed in Gaza, Syria and Norway.
Speaking in Brussels at a meeting of Palestinian youths, she said: "Against all the odds, they continue to learn, to work, to dream and aspire to a better future. And the days when we remember young people who have been killed in all sorts of terrible circumstances – the Belgian children having lost their lives in a terrible tragedy and when we think of what happened in Toulouse today, when we remember what happened in Norway a year ago, when we know what is happening in Syria, when we see what is happening in Gaza and in different parts of the world – we remember young people and children who lose their lives."
Monday's shooting attack on the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse claimed the lives of Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, 30, his 3-year-old and 6-year-old sons Gabriel and Arieh and 8-year-old Miriam Monsonego, daughter of school headmaster Rabbi Yaacov Monsonego.
A 17-year-old was seriously injured.
A a man riding on a scooter opened fire on the school Monday morning as the students were arriving for the school day, and then fled the scene.
Mystery surrounded the motives of the shooter after it emerged the same gun and scooter were used in two nearby deadly attacks on paratroopers last week.
The three shootings have taken place at precise four-day intervals, the first on March 11 when a gunman on a scooter shot dead a paratrooper in civilian clothing at point-blank range in southwestern city Toulouse.
On March 15, a gunman on a scooter shot dead two more airborne troops, this time in uniform, in the garrison town of Montauban, just 46 kilometres (29 miles) away. Another trooper from the same regiment was seriously wounded.
Then, on Monday, the same gun and scooter used in the previous attacks were used at the Ozar Hatorah school.