Cambodia bodies identified as French family

DNA tests have confirmed that the remains of five people found in a submerged car in Cambodia were of a French family (AFP/File, Tang Chhin Sothy)

PHNOM PENH (AFP)— DNA tests have confirmed that the remains of five people found in a submerged car in Cambodia in January are those of a Frenchman and his four children, embassy officials said Thursday.

The Cambodian government has agreed to send the skeletal remains to France for "additional examination" by forensics experts, the French embassy in Phnom Penh said in a statement.

No cause of death has been determined yet for widower Laurent Vallier, 42, and his young children.

The family's badly decomposed bodies were discovered inside Vallier's white 4x4 vehicle after it was retrieved from a large pond behind his house in southern Kampong Speu province on January 14.

"We are still investigating the case," Kampong Speu provincial police chief Keo Pisey told AFP.

Judicial inquiries into the deaths have been launched in France and Cambodia.

Vallier and his two sons and two daughters, thought to have been aged from two to nine, had been missing since September. Vallier's Cambodian wife died in childbirth in 2009.

Vallier, who according to his relatives worked as a tour guide, is thought to have moved from France to Cambodia around 12 years ago, arriving in Kampong Speu in 2007.