Jerusalem ? Police divers searching a river Thursday pulled out a red duffel bag holding a small skull, bones and clothes they said probably was the body of a 4-year-old French girl believed killed by her mother’s lover – the child’s grandfather.

The search for Rose Pizem and the tangled tale of her short life have riveted Israel for weeks.

Autopsy results were pending, but police in Tel Aviv clearly believed the body was the blue-eyed, auburn-haired Rose, who disappeared in May.

“We found the girl’s body, but it needs to undergo tests so we can be completely sure it’s her,” Police Commissioner David Cohen told reporters.

Rose’s 45-year-old grandfather, Roni Ron, initially told police he struck and killed the little girl in a fit of rage and threw a suitcase containing her body into the Yarkon River in Tel Aviv.

He has since claimed he confessed under duress. Both he and the girl’s mother, 23-year-old Marie-Charlotte Renault, have been in police custody for weeks.

The girl’s father, Benjamin Pizem, told Associated Press Television News from his home in suburban Paris that Israeli police informed him about the discovery of the body and would relay the results of DNA tests.

“I was shocked when I saw the images on television of the suitcase,” he said, adding he had nothing further to say until the body was identified.

Much remains a mystery about Rose’s life and death, but investigators, neighbors and social workers have painted a harrowing picture of a maltreated child surrounded by generations of dysfunctional adults.

The central figures in the dark drama are a young French mother and her estranged husband’s father, who usurped his son’s place in the woman’s life and fathered two more daughters with her, becoming Rose’s de facto stepfather as well as her grandfather.

For two months, Rose’s disappearance went unnoticed by authorities, until Ron’s mother notified social workers the child had vanished in May and she feared for her well-being. Ron was arrested three weeks later.