Girl found alive under corpses of slain family

CHEVALINE, France (AFP) - A four-year-old girl miraculously survived a deadly gun attack in the French Alps that left her father, mother and grandmother dead and her elder sister seriously injured, officials said on Thursday.

The little girl spent eight hours hidden between the bullet-riddled corpses of her mother and grandmother on the backseat of the British-registered family car following a mysterious and brutal shooting on the outskirts of a village on the edges of Lake Annecy.

A second man, believed to be a local who inadvertently cycled into the scene of the attack, was also found shot dead in the tree-lined car park on Wednesday afternoon. The girl's elder sister, who was found shot next to the car, was in a stable condition in hospital after being flown by helicopter to the nearby city of Grenoble.

Eric Maillaud, the prosecutor in charge of the investigation, said the four-year-old had emerged from the car without any injury. "She stayed, curled up under the bodies for eight hours and didn't move in all that time," he said.