French Police Search For Clues In Family Massacre, As Four-Year-Old Found Hiding Under Bodies
THE GUARDIAN, THE MIRROR (UK), LE MESSAGER ( France)
French police were still searching Thursday morning both for the gunman and the possible motive of a grisly shooting in a quiet village in the French Alps, which left four British tourists dead.
The British tabloids Thursday were dominated by reports of the shooting spree, which left two remaining survivors, two young girls of four and six years old as apparently the only witnesses.
The victims found in the car are reported to be a British family, with the father identified as Saad al-Hilli, who was born in Baghdad.
Annecy shooting no way a robbery gone wrong: this has all the hallmarks of targeted assassination of an entire family-poss Iraqi connections
— Jon Snow (@jonsnowC4) September 6, 2012
The Guardian reports that a four-year-old girl was found hiding underneath the bodies of two passengers in the back of the car in the early hours of Thursday.
The three victims of the shooting incident were found dead in the car seven hours earlier. The British family were on holiday in Saint-Jorioz near Lake Annecy.
A local French newspaper Le Messager reported that French police are now searching the caravan where the family were staying. Police have not yet found any weapons, though spent bullet cartridges were found littered around the crime scene.
A local cyclist was shot dead nearby and a six-year-old girl was found lying in the road injured after being beaten. The girl, thought to be the elder sister, has been taken to a hospital in Grenoble where she remains in a stable condition.
The Mirror is reporting that prosecutor Eric Maillaud has said: "She seems to be pulling through. She was beaten and has a fractured skull at least. There are no witnesses. Only she may be able to tell us what happened, if she can manage to do that."
Police had not spotted the younger girl as they had been waiting for forensic teams to arrive. She was reported to be "completely in shock and completely frozen," Eric Maillaud said.
Maillaud described the crime scene as something out of a movie.
