The dismembered body of a young woman has been found near a railway line in the same region of France in which the man suspected of killing British student Isabel Peake used to live.

French police are hunting 20-year-old Sid Ahmed Rezala as the chief suspect in the murder of Ms Peake - whose body was also found near a railway line.

Convicted rapist Rezala is also wanted in connection with another train murder - that of Corinne Caillaux, 36, whose stabbed body was found in a bathroom of the night train from Calais to Italy on 14 December.

The latest body could be that of a young woman who was reported missing after boarding a train in Lille on Friday night to travel to her family home in the nearby Somme region.

Rezala previously lived in nearby Amiens, where the body of another of his alleged victims was discovered.

Ms Peake - whose body was found on 13 October - had been a passenger on a night train from Limoges to Paris.

French police have been accused of bungling the operation investigate the murder of the Birmingham University student from Barlaston, Staffordshire, after Rezala escaped arrest in Marseille.

Bungled inquiry

Police said they had no immediate grounds to link the latest murder to the three which Rezala is wanted in connection with.

Officers throughout France have been searching for Rezala for more than a week after he evaded capture.

Bureaucracy was blamed for hampering the attempt to arrest him, giving the subject time to flee.

Rezala has been the chief suspect since the body of Ms Caillaux was found.

Detectives were able to identify him after his name was taken by an SNCF inspector for travelling on the Calais-Ventimiglia train without a ticket.

He is also thought to resemble a man seen talking to Ms Peake before she boarded the train at Limoges.

Rezala was freed in June from a prison near the city where he had served time for "voluntary violence with a knife".