French police investigating the murder of a British-Iraqi family in the Alps have asked to question a Swiss gunman who killed three women in his home village, Swiss police said yesterday.

Police in the neighbouring French region of Haute-Savoie made the request to their colleagues in the Swiss canton of Valais, where on Wednesday the gunman went on a shooting spree, a police spokesman said.

“French police in Haute-Savoie, who are wondering about a possible link between this killing and unsolved homicides in the region in recent years, made this request,” he said.

The gunman, known to have psychiatric and drug problems, killed three women and wounded two men in the tiny village of Daillon.

He was wounded during an exchange of gunfire while being apprehended by police and was still in hospital yesterday.

Officials said the shooter, whom police did not identify, had spent time in a psychiatric hospital in 2005 and was known to police as a drug user.

Police had previously confiscated weapons from the 33-year-old when he was placed in a psychiatric ward.

Police said he fired dozens of rounds from at least two weapons in the Valais shooting spree: a historic Swiss military rifle known as a mousqueton and a shotgun.

Valais officials yesterday said the shooter owned a small arsenal of weapons including two mousquetons, a shotgun, a rifle, an airsoft pistol and an alarm pistol.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.