Three days following the discovery of the remains of a French boy along an Alpine path, not far from where he vanished nine months prior, authorities have located some of the clothing he was wearing nearby.

Nonetheless, prosecutors state that the enigma surrounding Emile Soleil's disappearance in July of the previous year remains unresolved.

A hiker stumbled upon a skull and several teeth on Saturday, approximately a 25-minute walk from the village where he was last spotted.

The skull was promptly identified as belonging to the missing child through DNA analysis.

Presently, a T-shirt, shoes, and shorts worn by Emile on the day he went missing have been found, scattered across a small area about 150m (500ft) from the location of his remains.

Details regarding this recent discovery were disclosed by local public prosecutor Jean-Luc Blanchon, who asserted that Emile's demise remains shrouded in mystery. Whether Emile Soleil fell victim to an accident or a criminal act remains unknown.

"These skeletal remains alone do not provide conclusive evidence regarding the cause of Emile's death," he informed reporters. "Whether it was a fall, manslaughter, or murder, no hypothesis can be favored over another."

Emile, aged two-and-a-half, had only been in the village of Haut-Vernet in southeastern France for a few hours before he vanished. His disappearance has captivated public attention in France since then.

He had been staying at his grandparents' vacation home in Haut-Vernet, a village with a population of 25, situated at an altitude of 1,200m (4,000ft) on the slopes of the Massif des Trois-Evêchés mountain range.

The last confirmed sighting of him was by neighbors, walking along the village's sole street, wearing a yellow T-shirt and white shorts at 17:15 on Saturday, July 8.

Despite extensive and prolonged searches of the entire vicinity, no traces of the child were discovered.

Two days after a re-enactment of his disappearance involving 17 individuals on the preceding Thursday, a local woman stumbled upon some of his remains just over a kilometer from Haut-Vernet while out for a walk.

"This heart-breaking news was feared, and the time has come for mourning, contemplation, and prayer," the child's parents said in a statement.

The child's skull was sent away for analysis by forensic teams. Sniffer dogs, soldiers, police, and firefighters scoured the area for more evidence.

Jean-Luc Blanchon told a news conference on Tuesday that the skull had sustained "small fractures and cracks" after the boy's death, as well as bites from one or more animals.

"No trauma has been observed [on the skull] ante-mortem," he stressed, adding that it was clear the remains had not been buried in the ground.

What remains a mystery is why the boy's skull and clothing had not been detected earlier. The rest of his remains are yet to be found.

A spokeswoman for France's gendarmerie (military police) has already suggested the bones could have been placed there by a person or an animal, or they could have been shifted by changing weather conditions.

Or they could have been missed entirely during the extensive searches of the area last summer.

The public prosecutor said the female hiker had found the bones between 12:00 and 2:00 p.m. on Saturday on a "narrow, forest path" which she remembered walking on more than a month earlier. The clothes were found further away, close to a stream, he explained.

"We cannot be sure Emile's body was already present in the search area," said the prosecutor, or "that every square meter was covered by a member of the search teams".

He also made the point that because the original search took place when the undergrowth was especially thick, it was possible the summer temperatures could have affected the sniffer-dogs.

He accepted that his conclusions would not satisfy anybody, including Emile's family and investigators, and said the search would resume on the ground, probably on Wednesday.

So sad.