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Washington, Friday (AFP) Washington sniper suspects John Allen Muhammad and 17-year-old John Lee Malvo will be tried in Virginia where both will face the death penalty, authorities said Thursday as they were linked to a new killing.

"It is appropriate, it is imperative that the ultimate sanction be available for those who committed these crimes," Attorney General John Ashcroft said as he announced trial details for the two accused of terrorising the Washington region in a three-week shooting spree last month.

Muhammad, a 41-year-old Gulf War veteran, and Malvo are suspected of having killed 10 people and wounded three in Washington and its suburbs in Maryland and Virginia states.

Virginia, where three of the killings were carried out, allows minors to be tried as adults and executed by lethal injection.

"If convicted as an adult, the juvenile could face the death penalty," Ashcroft said.

Prosecutors would have to prove that Malvo actually pulled the trigger to impose the death penalty under Virginia law.

He is likely to be tried for the shooting death of Linda Franklin, 47, an FBI analyst who was shot in the head as she and her husband loaded their car in a store car park.

Authorities have now connected the pair to a murder in Atlanta, Georgia, another stop in an apparent coast-to-coast crime spree.

Atlanta police said the gun used in a September 20 Atlanta shooting was also used in a killing eight hours later in the neighboring state of Alabama.

The men are also accused of killings in Muhammad's native Louisiana, in the West Coast state of Washington and, more recently, in the shooting of a golfer in Tucson, Arizona.

In Virginia, Muhammad is likely to face trial for the October 19 killing of Dean Harold Meyers at a gasoline filling station in Prince William County, Virginia, about an hour west of Washington. 

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