Injured girl in Alps shooting saw just 'one bad guy'

The seven-year-old girl who survived a deadly gun attack in the French Alps which killed three members of her family told investigators on Friday that she had seen only “one bad guy,” a source close to the investigation said.

Zaina al-Hilli survived the September 5 attack despite being shot in the shoulder and severely beaten. She was revived from an artificially-induced coma on Sunday and returned to the UK on Friday after treatment in a French hospital .

'I started to think, is that a bullet hole?' William Brett Martin, a former RAF pilot, told the British press on Thursday what he encountered when he first came across the murder scene in the French Alps on September 5.

French police would not comment on who was accompanying the girl back to Britain, while Britain’s Foreign Office also declined to comment on how the youngster would help the investigation.

Zaina’s father Saad al-Hilli, 50, his wife Iqbal and her mother were shot dead in the incident near Lake Annecy in eastern France. A French cyclist was also found dead at the scene.

Her four-year-old sister Zeena also survived the shooting and was found eight hours later by police officers, huddled around the feet of her mother in the car’s foot well.

The two girls are the only witnesses to the murders.

The French investigation is now fully focussed on the UK, with speculation mounting that the killings were somehow linked to the al-Hilli family’s personal and professional lives.

Possible motives for the execution-style murders include the family’s Middle Eastern origins, al-Hilli’s work as a telecommunications engineer and an alleged dispute with his brother Zaid over an inheritance, something French police say he has denied.

FRANCE 24 (with wires)