Alps Shootings: Police Hunt British 4x4

Police investigating the Alps murders are hunting a British car - as a schoolgirl injured in the shootings returns to the UK.

Detectives are looking for a black Mitsubishi Pajero 4x4 with British number plates, which was seen driving on the French A39 near the scene of the attack on September 5.

A witness is said to have told investigators that the driver of the vehicle looked "rather nervous".

Police have been investigating the theory that the killers may have fled across the Swiss or Italian borders after the killings.

Meanwhile, seven-year-old Zainab al Hilli, whose parents and grandmother were were gunned down in the shooting spree near Lake Annecy, is returning to the UK from France.

The girl was placed in a medically induced coma after she was shot in the shoulder and badly beaten in the massacre which killed her three relatives last week.

The child, who is seen as one of the key witnesses in the case, left hospital at about 8.30am, accompanied by British police.

Zainab's state of health is understood to have improved in recent days, allowing her to travel back to the UK.

Her departure follows that of her younger sister, Zeena, who returned to the UK after escaping the brutal attack unscathed.

The four-year-old survived by cowering in the car but she was only discovered eight hours after the killings.

 
The bodies of Saad al Hilli, 50, his dentist wife Iqbal, 47, and her elderly mother were discovered in their family's BMW in a remote car park near Lake Annecy at around 4pm on September 5.

Next to the vehicle lay the body of Sylvain Mollier, 45, a French cyclist who apparently stumbled across the attack.

Another cyclist - the first to arrive at the scene - has described how he spotted Zainab "stumbling" around, bleeding and "moaning" near the car.

Brett Martin, 53, likened the carnage to a set from TV crime series CSI: Miami.

The former RAF pilot from Sussex said he biked to the top of a hill in the Combe d'Ire forest, near Chevaline, only to find himself faced with a bloodbath.

"As I got a little bit closer, a very young child stumbled out on to the road and at first I thought she was actually just playing with her sibling because she sort of looked, from a distance, as if she was falling over, larking about like a child would," he told the BBC.

"However, as I approached her it was obvious that she was quite badly injured and there was a lot of blood on her.

"As I got even closer, I then saw the car with its engine revving and its wheels spinning. It seemed at that moment in time like there had been a terrible car accident." - sky.com