French police have confirmed elderly Swiss woman found dead in a bullet-riddled BMW in the French Alps was the girls’ grandmother.

The elderly woman shot dead in a gun attack on a British family in the French Alps was the girls’ grandmother, French police have confirmed.

Annecy prosecutor Eric Maillaud told AFP: “Evidence gathered in Britain has enabled us to establish that the woman was the maternal grandmother.”

Officers are waiting to question her seven-year-old grandaughter, seen as the key witness to the shooting which left three of her family dead.

Zainab al Hilli was beaten around the head and shot in the shoulder. She remains heavily sedated in a French hospital after being brought out of a medically-induced coma on Sunday.

Mr Maillaud said: “The little girl has come out of the artificial coma but she is under sedation and her speech is not yet audible. She is in a better state of health now.”

But even as she emerged from the coma, it was clear it could be some time before she could be interviewed.

“It is out of the question to go and interview her in any sort of rushed way. She is extremely traumatised. Only the doctors have the ability to say (when she can be interviewed) and until I get the green light I will do nothing,” he added.

Her younger sister, four-year-old Zeena, who also survived the gun attack, has returned to the UK, reportedly accompanied by an aunt and uncle, a British social worker and family liaison officers from Surrey Police.

“She (Zeena) returned to the UK by air. On arrival she was put under the care of the authorities and the social services,” Mr Maillaud said.

Zeena was unhurt in the attack after laying undiscovered under the body of her dead mother Iqbal, who was killed alongside her father Saad on Wednesday last week.

Sylvain Mollier, 45, a French cyclist who apparently stumbled across the attack in Chevaline, near the borders of Italy and Switzerland, was also shot dead.

wiss and Italian police are helping in the hunt for those behind the shootings.

Police officer Benoit Vinneman told reporters that the crime scene is being re-examined, and that it would be wrong to focus on the theory of an “ordered execution”.

“Is this the work of a crazy person? Was the family the real target? Only work based on complete information can help us to see things clearly,” he said.

Two mobile phones discovered in the car are being examined by detectives.

Sky’s crime correspondent Martin Brunt said police will want to discover whether any calls were made in the preceding hours or days that might have involved a “rendezvous” in the remote layby.

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