The seven-year-old British girl shot, bludgeoned over the head and left for dead by an assailant who murdered her parents has regained consciousness in a French hospital.
Doctors had placed Zainab al-Hilli, who police hope holds the key to the mysterious assassination, in a medically induced coma to aid her recovery. Relatives from Britain were reported to be at the orphaned girl's bedside when she awoke.
Iraqi-born aeronautics engineer Saad al-Hilli, 50, his wife Ikbal, 47, a 77-year-old female relative and a French cyclist, who was passing by the scene, were shot several times at an Alpine beauty spot near Lake Annecy on Wednesday. The killer – or killers – put two bullets in each victim's head, leading to suggestions it could have been a professional assassination.
Zainab and her four-year-old sister Zeena, who was the only member of the family to escape unscathed, have been under armed guard since.
Eric Maillaud, the public prosecutor in Annecy, confirmed Zainab was now conscious. "She has come out of the artificial coma and is under sedation," he said on Sunday. Asked when the girl, whom he has described as the "key witness", would be interviewed, he said: "I cannot say."
Earlier Maillaud had said the French investigation team would wait for doctors to decide whether the child was well enough to be questioned. He described her survival as a miracle, and said it was "out of the question" for investigators to interview her until her condition improved. "We cannot go in a precipitate manner to interview someone who has been injured and traumatised," he said.
He added: "We feel desperately sorry for her [Zainab], and it is terrible that a victim, especially a child, has to be a key witness and has to be asked questions that will inevitably cause her even more suffering. We hope she will be able to tell us something, but it will be difficult."
Zeena returned to Britain on Sunday after two family members, a British social worker and a police liaison officer travelled to Annecy to collect her.
She hid in the rear footwell of the car when the shooting started. The petrified child was saved after taking refuge under her dead mother's legs, where she lay undiscovered for eight hours after gendarmes sealed off the scene, believing there was nobody alive in the car. Zeena has been in the care of a nurse, a child psychologist and has had round-the-clock care from a team from the British embassy. She has been "gently questioned at length" by French investigators over the past few days, but was unable to tell them anything. Apart from hearing "noises and cries", the public prosecutor said Zeena had seen nothing and was unable to advance the inquiry.
"The most important thing is to get her back to her family," he said. "She has been interviewed, but we have tried to avoid causing her any further suffering."
The victims were each shot twice in the head with an automatic pistol, suggesting an assassination. French investigators say they are still trying to establish if there was more than one killer and how many weapons were used. Around 25 bullet casings were found in and around the family's car. A source said initial ballistic tests suggested the shots had been fired from outside the vehicle at close range.
Maillaud has refused to speculate or give details of DNA found on the bullets or the results of the postmortem examinations, for fear of aiding those responsible for the murders. He said all lines of inquiry are being followed.
"The investigation has to be the priority now. We are not going to release any details or information that might enable the perpetrator or perpetrators of this savage attack to escape. My only aim is to see whoever did this caught and jailed."
He admitted that hopes of solving the case now rest with Zainab. The position of a child's car seat indicated that the elder girl was travelling in the front passenger seat when the family drove up La Route de Combe d'Ire near the village of Chevaline.Zainab was outside the vehicle, parked at the start of a mountain hiking trail, and was shot in the shoulder and subjected to a violent beating about the head, which fractured her skull.
The girl collapsed at the feet of a British cyclist, who arrived shortly after the killings. French investigators praised his "exemplary" reaction in placing the critically injured child in the recovery position and calling the emergency services.
The Briton, a former RAF pilot, who has a house in the region, was also profoundly shocked to discover the body of a French cyclist nearby. Sylvain Mollier, a 45-year-old father-of-three, had overtaken him on the hill leading to the beauty spot just moments before. Mollier, who police said appeared to have been "in the wrong place at the wrong time", was gunned down after apparently witnessing the bloodshed.
Zainab has been under police protection in intensive care at Grenoble university hospital since Wednesday and has undergone operations. Doctors said her life was no longer in danger, but they had put her into a medically induced coma to help her recovery.
On Sunday, detectives were going through the holiday caravan the family had stayed in since 3 September, which had been removed from Le Solitaire du Lac campsite on the banks of Lake Annecy on Saturday. French investigators are also looking at the contents of a laptop found in the caravan and two mobile phones found in the Hillis' BMW estate car. They are also communicating with police forces in Italy and Switzerland, where the killer or killers may have fled.
Police continued to search the Hillis' Surrey home and contacted Swedish authorities to confirm the identity of the 77-year-old woman, who had a Swedish passport.
