Major breakthrough hopes in case of British family shot dead in Alps

On 5 September, 2012, a family were shot by an unknown assailant on the Route Forestière Domaniale de la Combe d'Ire, near the French commune of Chevaline.

Iraq-born British man Saad al-Hilli, 50, wife Iqbal, 47 and her mother Suhaila al-Allaf, 74, were shot dead in the attack, along with 45-year-old French cyclist Sylvain Mollier.

Saad and Iqbal's two daughters survived the attack, with a seven-year-old girl shot in the shoulder and wounded in the head, while investigators found a four-year-old girl several hours after the killings.

The child had sought refuge in the footwell of the family car and stayed beneath her mother's legs.

The car had been reversed into a layby and was found with the engine still running, the rear wheels spinning in loose sand and the three murdered family members having been shot in the head twice.

The killings took place back in 2012, no suspect has ever been charged. (PHILIPPE DESMAZES/AFP via Getty Images)

Mollier's body was found nearby having been shot several times, while the first person to discover the scene was British man Brett Martin, who had moved to France and was out cycling.

When he came across the scene, he had not heard gunshots but saw the seven-year-old girl Zainab stumbling on the road before she collapsed in front of her family car.

A number of suspects were identified and later exonerated by evidence uncovered in the investigation with the most recent arrest taking place in 2022 before being ruled out.

Last October, a reconstruction of the crime was staged by investigators at a disused air base outside Paris and now French publication Le Parisien suggests there is hope that a breakthrough in the case may be coming.

They report that in the reconstruction, various scenarios were tested to determine how skilled the killer would have been, with the investigators concluding that whomever carried out the murders would have needed a high level of ability with a gun.

Investigators staged a reconstruction. (Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

The gun used in the killings was a Luger P06/29 and investigators believe that between 60 and 90 seconds the murderer fired it 21 times.

With the family members each killed by being finished off with two shots to the head, Le Parisien says that the killer would have been 'trained in very particular shooting techniques'.

They reported that in France, only intelligence officers and some marines were trained in this way, and suggested that the killer's method of execution might point across the Alps to Switzerland as their special forces were trained this way.

As such, they claimed that the most likely culprit was a trained gunman who'd gained experience in the Swiss military and had 'gone off the rails'.