Father named in French Alps shooting

Chevaline: The father of a family slain in the French Alps was identified as Saad al-Hilli, a 50-year-old born in Baghdad, a French police source said.

The father, mother and grandmother from the same family were found dead on Wednesday following a shooting in which another man also died. Two daughters from the family survived.

The police source also confirmed that the Hilli family lived in Claygate, Surrey, south-west of London.

Meanwhile, the killings in French Alps shocked and horrified the British press.

While Britain’s Foreign Office said it was “urgently looking into reports that suggest a British family is involved”, many newspapers splashed the reports over their front pages.

The Daily Mail’s front page read ’British family’ gunned down in the Alps’, while it and The Sun focused on claims that two survivors of the shootings could be at risk because the suspected killers would want to eliminate any witnesses.

Later online versions of The Sun, Britain’s most-read newspaper, led on the fact that a four-year-old girl was found alive under her mother’s body eight hours after the shootings in Chevaline near Annecy.

The Mirror speculated that it could have been an attempted carjacking - the family were found in a bullet-riddled 4X4 BMW estate car.

The Foreign Office said it could not confirm that the victims were British.

“Our thoughts are with the friends and families of those involved,” a spokesman said.

“Our consular officials are at the scene and are working closely with the French authorities to establish more information.”

It emerged that a four-year-old girl survived the shooting and spent eight hours curled up under her mother’s bullet-riddled body.

The other victims in the family are believed to be her father and her grandmother.

The girl’s elder sister, who was found wounded next to the car, was in a serious but stable condition in hospital after being flown by helicopter to the city of Grenoble.

Another man, believed to be a local who interrupted the attack by chance as he cycled by, was also found shot dead in the tree-lined car park on Wednesday.