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CRIME

Family shot before house fire: Swiss police

Five people found dead in their burned-out house in western Switzerland this week were shot before the fire, police said Saturday, voicing suspicion a father had killed his family then himself.

Smoke billows from the roof of a residential house that caught fire after a large explosion in Yverdon-les-Bains, western Switzerland, where five people were found dead
Smoke billows from the roof of a residential house that caught fire after a large explosion in Yverdon-les-Bains, western Switzerland, where five people were found dead earlier this week. They were shot before the fire, the police of the canton of Vaud said on Saturday. Photo: Olivier ALLENSPACH / FLASHPRESS/ALLENSPACH / AFP

“After two days of intense investigations, a family drama is the hypothesis favoured by the prosecutor in charge of the criminal investigation and the investigators,” police in the western Vaud region said in a statement.

Emergency services were alerted early Thursday after a massive explosion followed by a raging fire engulfed a detached house in the lakeside town of Yverdon-les-Bains, in Vaud canton.

The bodies of all five family members — a 45-year-old man, a 40-year-old woman and three girls aged five, nine and 13 — who lived there were eventually found in the rubble.

Autopsies determined that each had been shot, resulting in wounds that could have caused their deaths.

“A weapon was found near the father, who may have carried out the four other homicides, before ending his own life,” the police statement said.

There was so far no indication that anyone else had been involved, it added.

The cause of the fire had meanwhile not yet been formally established, the statement said.

However, police pointed out that “large quantities of accelerant, possibly gasoline” had been found in various rooms throughout the house.

“This could explain the level of damage to the building,” the statement suggested.

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CRIME

Mystery persists as missing Swiss paintings reappear

One of the Switzerland's top art museums announced Sunday the return of two paintings that went missing last year, refusing to provide details in a case still under investigation.

Mystery persists as missing Swiss paintings reappear

Kunsthaus Zurich offered in June 2023 a reward of 10,000 Swiss francs ($11,100) for information that could help it track one painting by Flemish painter Robert van den Hoecke and another by the Dutch Golden Age artist Dirck de Bray.

The small paintings disappeared when the Kunsthaus took down more than 700 works for cleaning and restoration after a fire broke out in August 2022.

But no trace of the two paintings could later be found.

On Sunday, the museum said only that its restoration experts had confirmed both paintings were in “good condition”, with no indication of how or when they turned up.

Because of ongoing police inquiries, “no further information will be released for the time being,” the Kunsthaus said.

Museum officials had alerted the missing works to the Art Loss Register, the world’s largest database of lost and stolen pieces.

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