Police have found bones and a decomposing body believed to be the remains of five children at the home of a couple in southern French.
Authorities said the discovery was made in the city of Orange.
They were found after a 32-year-old woman, who is also the mother of two children, aged 8 and 9, gave birth to a baby on Sunday.
According to prosecutors, the woman’s partner, distressed after learning of her pregnancy at a very late stage, began searching their home and found what appeared to be human remains. He alerted authorities through the hospital where the woman was being treated.
Prosecutors launched a criminal investigation into suspected murder on Monday, after police searched the couple’s home.
A forensic pathologist dispatched to the scene estimated, based on initial findings, that the bones and decomposing body discovered belonged to five infants. The man, also aged 32, told police he knew nothing about his partner’s possible pregnancies.
The public prosecutor’s office called on child welfare services to carry out an urgent assessment of the situation of the couple’s 8 and 9-year old children.
It also issued a provisional placement order for the baby born on Sunday pending referral of the case to a children’s court judge.
The mother, who is still in hospital, after being brought there a day after giving birth at home, has not yet been interviewed by investigators. It was not immediately clear whether she had legal representation.
A post-mortem examination has been ordered on the decomposing body, and the bones will undergo anthropological analysis in a laboratory, prosecutors said.