In Annecy, a child witnesses murder. It can't be sewn into 'normal' A police officer in Claygate, England carries flowers from a well wisher to the house of the al-Hilli family.
Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images When human tragedies happen, one of the most unsettling aspects of their aftermath often concerns survivors and their future. In the case of the four-year-old girl miraculously found alive after eight hours underneath the murdered bodies of her family in Annecy, France, many will wonder whether she can hope to have anything like a "normal life".
Psychologists are already rushing to give their prognoses and to offer suggestions for treatment. Some say she mustn't be forced to relive the horror; others recommend she be helped to confront the reality of her parents' and grandmother's deaths by being allowed to see their bodies. It's hard to imagine how someone so young might experience something so extreme and unusual.
What exactly is a "normal life"? • For legal reasons, this article will not be open to further comments. Alps killings fuel French soul-searching. Beyond the cold horror of each emerging detail of what happened in that forest car park – of the strangely clinical nature of the killings and of a small girl huddled for hours mute under her dead mother's skirt – another dread question is twisting French stomachs.
Why do they have to be English? Contrary to popular belief – and what they themselves would often have you believe – the French are unusually sensitive about what foreigners think of them, obsessively comparing themselves with their neighbours, particularly the British, whom they see as their eternal opposites, forever soliciting the views of correspondents in Paris on the obscurest of subjects. Annecy murders: French police ask Baghdad to seek out victims' relatives. Flowers are laid outside the al-Hilli family home in Claygate, Surrey, on 7 September.
Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images. French Alps shooting: brother of victim denies dispute. The brother of an Iraqi-born Briton who was murdered along with three other people in the French Alps has denied that he was in dispute with the dead man over financial matters, investigators in FranceFrance have said. French prosecutor Eric Maillaud said that police had been told earlier of a possible feud over money involving Saad al-Hilli, the victim, and his brother but that the sibling had gone to a police station in the UK to deny that this was the case. He said that the brother, Zaid al-Hilli, first spoke to police in Britain on Thursday after learning of the massacre from media reports. "He turned up again this morning because he heard about the conflict, the dispute between himself and his brother and he said, 'no, I don't have a conflict with my brother'," Maillaud added. How do you talk to children about tragedies like the Annecy murders?
Children can take in details of horrific events, like the killings in Annecy, on radio news reports.
Alps shootings: murders have 'hallmarks of a professional assassination' French investigators say the murder of a British man and three others on the edge of a secluded Alpine forest bears the hallmarks of a professional assassination as they revealed they were investigating allegations there had been a money dispute in the family. The increasing belief among investigators that Saad al-Hilli was targeted means attention will focus on his private and professional life as they search for clues to any motive for the massacre. French investigators said one line of inquiry was an alleged family dispute, said to have involved a wrangle over property. French officials stressed this was one line of inquiry among others.
Young Alps shooting victim could still live normal life, say experts. If the little girl found hidden behind the legs of her dead mother in Annecy receives swift and skilled help, say experts, she could go on to live something close to a normal life. "There is evidence that children can come through trauma of this level," said Julie Stokes, a consultant clinical psychologist and founder of childhood bereavement charity Winston's Wish in London. Stokes, who was given an OBE for her work with bereaved children, runs a service at the charity for children whose parents have been murdered. About half of the victims are killed by people known to the child, said Stokes, in murders often witnessed by the child. "What happened in FranceFrance is particularly difficult but unfortunately these kinds of murders are not unusual," she said. "Inevitably there is deep trauma and children need good quality care very quickly but if they receive that, and have good alternative care, then they can achieve their potential and beyond.
" French Alps shootings: robbery, feud and Iraq war link among theories. French police have said the brutal murder of three members of a British family holidaying in the French Alps, together with the shooting and near-fatal beating of their seven-year-old child, bears all the hallmarks of an organised assassination. The way in which Iraqi-born Saad al-Hilli, 50, his wife, Ikbal, and a 77-year-old woman as well as a passing cyclist were gunned down with a bullet to the head on an isolated hillside near Lake Annecy suggests a premeditated ambush. Investigators admit this scenario is a possibility but say it is only one of several theories being examined. "All we know for sure is that whoever did this wanted to kill these people," the local public prosector, Eric Maillaud, said on Friday.
"It is clear from the fact they put a bullet in each head and shot and beat the girl, presumably leaving her for dead. " "What can we say for sure? "We don't know in what order the people died and I fear we may never know. " Robbery National security Family feud Racist killing. French Alps shootings: detectives head to UK. A team of French detectives is to work with British police in the desperate search for clues as to why a British family was murdered along with a passing cyclist on a secluded French hillside.
The detectives are to request permission to search the Surrey home of Saad al-Hilli and his wife, Ikbal, and speak to the dead man's brother, Zaid, after claims there may have been a dispute in the family over money. French officials said this was one line of inquiry among others and Zaid has reportedly told police he denies any involvement. More than 48 hours after the Hillis were killed and a 77-year-old woman and a cyclist were gunned down in cold blood with a bullet to each of their heads, French officials revealed they had confirmed the couple's identity by asking their four-year-old daughter, Zeena. Eric Maillaud, the public prosecutor, said she had responded in "childish language" saying: "Yes, that's my mummy. And that's my daddy. " "Nothing has been left to chance," a gendarme told Le Figaro.