Seremban (Malaysia) (AFP)

The Franco-Irish teenager who had disappeared from a Malaysian hotel complex is likely to have died of hunger as a result of internal bleeding, the local police said Thursday, dismissing the criminal track at this stage.

The naked body of Nora Quoirin was found Tuesday in a small stream at the bottom of a ravine in the jungle about 2.5 km from the place of his disappearance, after ten days of intense research that mobilized hundreds of people, helicopters and dogs.

Based on the results of the autopsy, the Malaysian police estimated that the 15-year-old girl, who suffers from a slight mental disability, was probably dead after spending a week in the jungle, and said her body showed no sign of aggression or abduction.

Nora Quoirin was missing in the night of August 3-4, just after arriving with her family living in London for a vacation at the Dusun Resort.

It is located about 70 km south of the capital, on the edge of the jungle near Seremban, the capital of the state of Negeri Sembilan. A window had been found open in the pavilion where the family resided.

She died of "bowel bleeding due to not eating" and "extreme stress," Mohamad Mat Yusop, the state police chief, told reporters.

- "Our hearts are broken" -

"For the moment, there is no suspicion of a criminal act," he added.

"His body has scratches," he said, but there is no indication that she was sexually assaulted or abducted. "Parents can recover the body."

The police had treated the case as a case of disappearance, while the girl's relatives had raised the possibility of abduction.

After being found, the teenage girl's body was evacuated by helicopter to the Seremban hospital where her relatives identified her. An autopsy was performed Wednesday.

Nora Quoirin had holoprosencephaly, which meant she had a smaller brain than normal, limited speech, and was only able to write a few words.

Nora Quoirin's parents said the girl was "at the heart of the family," in a statement released by the Lucie Blackman Trust, a British organization that assists families of missing persons abroad.

"She is the most honest, the most adorable girl and we love her so much, the pain caused by her disappearance is unbearable, our hearts are broken," the statement said.

Police had examined fingerprints on the window left open as well as testimonies of villagers who reported hearing a truck early in the morning of the teenager's disappearance.

A group of volunteers involved in the search discovered the body after information from an inhabitant to the authorities, in the area where the official operations were conducted and where the teams had already passed.

According to her parents, Nora was "absolutely not" used to running away.

On August 9, four days before the discovery of the body, the Paris prosecutor's office opened an investigation to contact the authorities in Malaysia and follow the case. In the case of events occurring abroad, the French courts could launch this procedure only by choosing a criminal classification, in this case "kidnapping and forcible confinement".

However, the French authorities did not have at that time "any specific element accrediting this trail" criminal, recognizes a source close to the file. Two investigators from OCRVP (the Central Office for the Repression of Violence against Persons) went on site to witness the investigations.

© 2019 AFP