The body of missing toddler Émile Soleil, who disappeared without trace in France last year, have been found.

Walkers found the two-year-old’s remains close to the isolated family home near the Alps – in Haut-Vernet, a hamlet south of Grenoble – where he went missing in July 2023.

The boy had been staying at his grandparents’ home the day he disappeared, and was last seen playing in their garden.

The grim discovery, made on March 30, was described as a key breakthrough for the investigation into the toddler’s disappearance.

A statement released by public prosecutors in Aix-en-Provence on Easter Sunday said that “genetic analysis identifies” the bones as belonging to little Èmile.

The statement added a “criminalistic analysis” was underway and gendarmes – military officials in France – were carrying out “additional research” in the area where the remains were found.

The search site is around two miles as the crow flies from the home of the boy’s grandparents, where Émile was last seen with his grandfather, 58-year-old Philippe Vedovini.

A witness saw the grandfather, a physiotherapist-osteopath, cutting wood outside his house around the time Émile is thought to have wandered off.

The disappearance of the boy sparked a desperate countryside search last summer, which involved helicopters, thermal camera drones and sniffer dogs.

Lead prosecutor Rémy Avon, who is heading the judicial enquiry into the toddler’s disappearance, said the possibilities that Émile had been murdered, kidnapped, or got involved in an accident were all being looked at.

Mr Avon said both the homes of Émile’s parents, in the southern town of La Bouilladisse near Marseille, and of his grandparents had been searched back in July.

There was no immediate comment about the discovery of the remains from Émile’s family, who were all at Easter Sunday mass when told.