ANNECY, France: Police yesterday were investigating if a family feud over money could be the motive for an execution-style killing of a British-Iraqi family in the French Alps.

Prosecutor Eric Maillaud said British police told French authorities of a financial dispute between the murdered British man and his brother, but he cautioned against drawing early conclusions.

Victim Saad Al-Hilli’s four-year-old daughter — who was discovered alive and unhurt hours after the shooting beneath her dead mother’s body — had meanwhile been spoken to and was unable to give police any new clues.

A local man was also killed in the shooting after apparently witnessing the attack on the family’s car.

“It seems that there was a dispute between the two brothers about money. This seems to be credible information coming from the British police,” Maillaud said.

He added however that it was difficult to imagine how a family feud could “pass from a financial dispute to a quadruple murder.”

A French police source said the brother of Hilli, a 50-year-old Briton born in Iraq, had presented himself to British police on Thursday to proclaim his innocence and cooperate in the probe.

Maillaud said the little girl found in the car had been unable to help investigators, adding that officers had to be “extremely careful about the declarations of a traumatized little girl.” He said police were hoping to “find certain things in the home that could give us leads on the killers.”

Hilli, his wife and mother-in-law were killed in their British-registered BMW estate car on Wednesday in a forest car park near the village of Chevaline in the picturesque Haute-Savoie region.

The body of local cyclist Sylvain Mollier, 45, who worked in the nuclear industry was found nearby. Each had been shot in the head.