There will be no quick solution to finding the killers of four people gunned down in the French Alps, a prosecutor warned.
Around 100 police officers in Britain and France are investigating the deaths of engineer Saad al Hilli, 50, his dentist wife Iqbal, 47, her elderly mother and passing cyclist Sylvain Mollier in the attack last month.
The couple's four-year-old daughter Zeena lay undiscovered under her mother's corpse for eight hours after the shooting, while her seven-year-old sister Zainab was found with serious injures after being shot and beaten.
They were attacked as they drove through a remote area close to Lake Annecy and so far there have been no clear leads.
Annecy's chief prosecutor, Eric Maillaud, said: "It's a long task and there's nothing that gives hope of a result in the near future."
French investigators came to the UK and searched the al Hilli family home in Claygate, Surrey, in the wake of the deaths.
They said last month they were investigating three lines of inquiry, focusing on Mr al Hilli's work, his family and links to his native Iraq.
Mr Maillaud said: "Perhaps if we can understand why they were killed we can work out who killed them but at the moment there are many questions.
"I think the investigation will take a very, very long time, unless we discover something that will suddenly enable us to understand everything.
"There are lines of inquiry but each raises so many questions and nothing suggests there will be a quick solution."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article