THREE PEOPLE WERE found shot dead earlier today in a car on the French Mediterranean island of Corsica, a source close to the inquiry into their killings said.

The bodies were found in a village near the town of Corte in the north of the island, which has suffered three decades of low-level violence by separatists opposed to French rule.

A dozen men have been shot dead in Corsica since the start of the year. Police say many of them were victims of score-settling in ongoing feuds.

The latest deaths come less than a week after a British-Iraqi family was gunned down in the French Alps.

Saad al-Hilli, his wife Iqbal and her mother were found dead in their car in a forest car park near the village of Chevaline last Wednesday. A passing French cyclist was also killed.

The Hillis’s daughter Zainab, aged seven, was seriously wounded and her four-year-old sister Zeena escaped by hiding under her dead mother’s skirts.

- (c) AFP 2012