French Alps shootings: single weapon was 7.65mm pistol, say investigators The British family murdered while on holiday in the French Alps were all shot with a single weapon, according to investigators. Ballistic and forensic experts who have examined the bullet casings at the scene say they were fired from a 7.65mm automatic pistol, a medium calibre that is not as powerful as modern 9mm pistols. Saad al-Hilli, 50, his wife, Iqbal, 47, and her mother, Suhaila al-Allaf, 74, were each shot twice to the head in their car at a beauty spot near Lake Annecy, in the Haute Savoie, last Wednesday. Syvain Mollier, 45, a French father of three who appears to have come across the bloodbath while cycling up the mountain path, was shot up to seven times, including twice in the head. The Hillis two daughters were the only survivors. The eldest, Zainab, aged seven, was shot in the shoulder and beaten around the head, leaving her with a fractured skull. She has been brought out of a medically induced coma and police are waiting to interview her. Her sister, Zeena, four, who hid for eight hours in the rear footwell of the family's BMW 5-series estate under the skirt of her dead mother, has been brought back to Britain by carers. Nearly 25 bullet casings were found at the scene. Several were reported to have been discovered in the car, suggesting the gunman had fired at close range, but investigators said all the shots were fired from outside the vehicle. A source close to the inquiry told the Dauphiné Libéré newspaper that detectives were now working on the theory there was one gunman who may have had one or more accomplice. "There was only one weapon used in the attack on the Hilli family at Chevaline, according to a source close to the inquiry," a journalist told the Guardian. The weapon used was an automatic pistol of a 7.65mm calibre, a medium calibre considered as old by experts and not corresponding to modern weapons. Witnesses including a former RAF pilot who arrived at the scene on a bicycle moments after the killer fled reported seeing a dark-coloured - possibly green - 4x4 vehicle driving down the narrow winding road away from the scene followed by a motorbike. At the Hilli family home in Claygate, Surrey, detectives called in army bomb disposal experts and evacuated the area for two hours after discovering "items" that were later assessed to be non-hazardous. They appeared to be concentrating on items discovered in a workshop in the garden of the mock-Tudor home. James Mathews, a family friend, said the workshop was used by Hilli, an aeronautics engineer, as a draughtsman's office for his design work, and by his wife to study for her dentistry exams. Mathews, 53, a fellow engineer, said he had helped Hilli build the workshop a number of years ago and that inside there were a number of computer servers, large printouts of plans, and four desks. Dismissing claims about hazardous materials, Mathews said: "Would he keep a explosive materials where his wife worked?" He said that there was a further office upstairs inside the house and two garages, one of which contained tools and bicycles and the other a mothballed 1950s Mercedes Benz. Mathews said Hilli had worked for Surrey Satellites on an ad-hoc freelance basis, and that when they had spoken on 24 August Hilli had told him he did not know when he would be back working for the company as his latest project had ended. French police have been combing through the caravan in which the family stayed from 3 September until the day of the shooting, which has been removed from the Solitaire du Lac campsite at Saint-Jorioz. They are examining a laptop computer found in the caravan and two mobile phones discovered in the car. They hope CCTV cameras might have captured the killer as they fled the Alpine beauty spot. We are looking at all the cameras that might give us some information. We're finding out where they all are, outside shops, banks or even as part of the video protection of communities and we will collect their recordings," a gendarme told the Dauphiné Libéré. Firearms with a 7.65mm calibre are not as powerful as some modern 9mm pistols and are still fairly prevalent, said Philip Boyce, UK firearms expert for Forensic Scientific. It's probably the most famous calibre. There is the old James Bond Walther PPK. You can get very early 1903, 1904 pistols that were made in that calibre. It ranges from back then to now and they are still making them today. It could be quite a modern gun was used," he said. It's probably a pistol of some sort. There are a lot of manufacturers around the world make them. It's not a low, low calibre. It's still very dangerous. Boyce added: "The fact that there are 25 cartridge cases is interesting. Normally you have between seven and 15 cartridges in a magazine. So the person who did this may have had two magazines, or they have got a special one where they have got an extended magazine, which will take 25 cartridges. Normally you wouldn't expect a pistol of that calibre to have a 25-cartridge capacity magazine. Caroline Davies