LONDON — French and British police searched the U.K. home of a British-Iraqi couple slain while vacationing in the French Alps, as it emerged Saturday that all four people killed in the attack took two gunshots to the head.
Meanwhile, relatives arrived in France to help care for the couple’s two surviving daughters, one of whom was badly wounded.
Questions remained about a potential motive for the killings as well as the identity of one victim, an elderly woman found dead in the couple’s bullet-riddled BMW.
Police have said they are probing reports of a financial dispute between the slain husband and his brother but stress they are following all leads. The brother has denied any dispute.
The identity of the dead couple — mechanical design engineer Saad al Hilli and his wife, Ikbal — was based partly on the testimony of their 4-year-old daughter Zeena, who survived unhurt by hiding under her mother’s skirt as about 25 automatic-handgun rounds were fired at the family car.
Her older sister, 7-year-old Zaina, was badly wounded and is in a medically induced coma.
Aside from the elderly woman shot dead dead in the car, French cyclist Sylvain Mollier, 45, whom authorities suspect was in the wrong place at the wrong time, was also killed in Wednesday’s rampage.
French prosecutor Eric Maillaud, based in Annecy near the site of the killing, said at a news conference Saturday that each of the dead was shot twice in the head — one more time than previously stated — in addition to an undisclosed additional number of times elsewhere.
Autopsies on the bodies were completed late Friday, Maillaud said, adding that the bodies will be returned to the family “as soon as possible.”
Maillaud remained tight-lipped throughout Saturday’s news conference, saying he was “at the limits” of what he could publicly disclose. But he confirmed that France has asked Italy and Switzerland to assist in the hunt for whoever is responsible for the shootings, which took place a short drive from the borders of both countries.
French investigators arrived in Britain on Friday night, and police on Saturday snapped pictures of the al Hilli home in the village of Claygate, a London suburb in the county of Surrey. Some officers entered the house in protective suits, while other carried boxes with equipment and evidence bags into an investigation tent outside.
Authorities in Britain, too, revealed few details. Surrey’s police force stressed that the probe is French-led and that the emphasis now is on the victims of the tragedy.
Asst. Chief Constable Rob Price of Surrey police confirmed that family liaison officers have been deployed in the U.K. and in France to help the victims, while Maillaud, the French prosecutor, said relatives of the dead have arrived in France to help care for the two young sisters. He did not identify the relatives or say how many were arriving.
Maillaud has said investigators are looking forward to speaking to 7-year-old Zaina, who was shot in the shoulder and beaten, but she remains in the medically induced coma.
