'We fear the worst' say police hunting for missing twins

The search for missing Swiss twins spread to Corsica and southern Italy yesterday, after authorities confirmed the six-year-old girls were on a ferry to the French island four days before their father apparently took his own life in Italy.

Marseille prosecutor Jacques Dallest said Matthias Kaspar Schepp and his daughters boarded a ferry for Propriano, in Corsica, on 31 January, but authorities could not confirm that the twins ever left the boat.

Meanwhile, police in southern Italy interviewed a coffee shop owner who reported seeing a man and his daughters who fit the description of blonde Alessia and Livia some time last week. The bar is in the city of Cerignola, where Schepp was found dead on 3 February.

If confirmed, the report would place the twins in Italy for the first time since they were reported missing from their home in Lausanne, Switzerland on 30 January. Police, who searched the bar and took a closed-circuit video, have refused to comment.

"Either the father threw the girls overboard during the trip from Marseille to Propriano, or he got off with them and something happened and he was able to get rid of them before killing himself in Italy," Mr Dallest said. "We fear the worst."

One witness on the Scandola ferry reported seeing the twins, the prosecutor said. Another said she heard crying from Schepp's neighboring cabin and "a bit later, she saw the little girls," Mr Dallest said. She said she saw them again later on the ferry's playground.

It is unclear whether the girls disembarked in Corsica. One passenger aboard the ferry told police he saw a man and two girls get off the boat, but he "was not able to identify the little girls," the prosecutor said.

Police have said previously the father was seen in Corsica and later Naples, before his body was found in Cerignola, on the other side of the Italian peninsula. Police say he threw himself under a train.

The Marseille prosecutor said Schepp withdrew money from a cash machine in southern France the day before he died. Swiss police say he later mailed €4,400 from Bari, Italy to his estranged wife in Switzerland.

The mother and father were both employees of Philip Morris International in Lausanne.

Oriana Scelsi, owner of the Fiore bar on the outskirts of Cerignola, said yesterday she saw a man who fit Schepp's description carrying two girls.

"They stopped at the door, the father asked for a toilet because they were running late," Ms Scelsi said. "He said, 'Come on, come on Lia, or else we'll be late for the train,'."

Meanwhile, Swiss police yesteray said a man and his two sons, who have been missing since Monday, have been found safe and well in Italy.

Italian police found Erich Zimmermann, 50, and his sons - Tim, ten, and Lorin, seven - at a motorway rest stop south of Milan. Police in Switzerland's eastern region of Zug said the three were out of money and food, but otherwise well.