Fears for twins after father's death note

TWO Swiss police officers have arrived in Corsica to assist the French force in the search for the twin six-year-old girls who disappeared almost two weeks ago.

Hope of finding the Swiss girls alive is fading after a letter from their father turned up declaring he had killed them and was planning to kill himself.

Matthias Kaspar Schepp took the twins to Corsica but left the French island without them.

His body was found days later in Italy.

A police spokesman from the girls' home state of Vaud said the Swiss officers arrived in Corsica yesterday to "co-operate with the investigation".

Jean-Christophe Sauterel said, despite the grim contents of the letter, police would continue the search for Alessia and Livia.

A letter sent to the twins' mother suggested that the girls had been killed by their 43-year-old father. "They are resting in peace, they didn't suffer," he wrote, shortly before he died.

Swiss police say the search for Alessia and Livia would continue even as evidence mounts that there was little chance of them being found alive. Schepp's letter did not say when or where he killed them.

"We are always searching for Alessia and Livia," saidSauterel, spokesman for the cantonal police. "It's just what the father said... We don't have proof."