* Girl, aged 4, was in car with bodies for hours
* Four dead believed to be tourists from Britain and local
man
* Second girl found with serious injuries
* Prosecutor says no idea on motive of killing of "enormous
savagery"
(Adds details from family home outside London)
CHEVALINE, France, Sept 6 (Reuters) - A four-year-old
British girl spent eight hours cowering among the bodies of
three adults, thought to be her mother, father and grandmother,
who were shot dead in a car in the French Alps.
The child, apparently on a family camping holiday from
Britain, was found by police unhurt shortly before midnight on
Wednesday huddled on the floor behind the front seats of the
car, hidden under the legs and skirt of one of the dead women.
A second girl of about eight, thought to be her sister, had
been found earlier with serious injuries having been shot in the
shoulder and severely beaten on the head.
A French cyclist was also found shot dead at the scene on a
mountain road near the village of Chevaline, close to the Annecy
lake and the Swiss border. The man, a young father who lived in
the area named Sylvain Mollier, "just happened to be riding by"
at the time of the attack, officials said.
"I do not call this the work of professionals. I call it an
act of enormous savagery," public prosecutor Eric Maillaud, who
was visibly shaken, told a news conference in the town of
Annecy, southeastern France.
Police had no idea of the motive, he said.
The owner of the UK-registered car, who was found dead at
the wheel, was Iraqi-born Briton Saad al-Hilli from Surrey,
southern England, a source close to the investigation told
Reuters.
Police arrived at the scene at about 4 p.m. (1400 GMT) on
Wednesday - shortly after the attack - after another cyclist, a
British former air force officer, raised the alarm after coming
across the car with its engine still running and the older girl
stumbled out from behind it and collapsed at his feet.
POLICE PROTECTION
The younger girl, too terrified to move or make a sound,
went unnoticed for eight hours because investigators did not
open the car doors in order not to disturb any evidence pending
the arrival of forensic experts from Paris.
They finally opened up the vehicle after a man at the
campsite who had met the group alerted police to the fact there
was a second girl in the party.
"She started smiling and speaking English as soon as a
gendarme from the Chambery search brigade took her in his arms
and got her out of the car," Maillaud said.
The cyclist and two of the adults in the car were killed by
gunshots to the head, Maillaud said. About 15 bullet casings
were found at the scene and the weapon may have been an
automatic pistol, he added.
Both children are in hospital in Grenoble under police
protection. The older girl, who is in a stable condition, h ad
been placed in an artificial coma pending a second operation
following emergency surgery overnight. "She was struck very
violently and apparently has skull fractures," Maillaud said.
The British cyclist who called police said he had been
overtaken on the road, shortly before the killing, by the French
cyclist found dead at the scene.
"LOVELY LITTLE GIRLS"
Police stood guard outside the al-Hilli's detached,
half-timbered family home in Claygate, a small, quiet village on
the southwestern outskirts of London.
Neighbour Lorna Davy, whose children attend the same school
as the two al-Hilli girls, described their parents as "chatty
and involved with the community" and their daughters as "really
lovely little girls."
"It seems incredible - my first thought was that they must
just have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, but now
it's hard to know what to think," Davy said.
Another neighbour, Jack Saltman, said al-Hilli was kind and
helpful, and came to Britain from Iraq 20 years ago and had
lived in the Claygate house for a decade.
"The two girls were adorable, they'd play together for hours
and chat to me over the fence about their holidays and things,"
Saltman told Reuters.
"It's absolutely heartbreaking that this has happened."
(Additional reporting by Catherine Lagrange in Lyon and
Alessandra Prentice in Claygate; Writing by Brian Love; Editing
by Jon Hemming)
