Probe Launched Into Cult Members’ Deaths

Investigators opened a murder investigation Sunday into the deaths of 16 members of a doomsday cult amid suspicions they were shot, drugged or asphyxiated before their bodies were burned.

Three young girls were among those shot to death in the remote Alpine forest, said Prosecutor Jean-Francois Lorans.

Authorities suspect the killers are among the dead, whose bodies were found Saturday near the village of Saint-Pierre-de-Cherennes, 20 miles southwest of Grenoble.

The dead were tentatively identified as missing members of the Swiss-based Order of the Solar Temple.