A 47-year-old woman has confessed to killing her eight newborn children and hiding their bodies in a village in northern France.
Dominique Cottrez and her husband, also in his forties, have been in custody since the bodies were found on Tuesday wrapped in plastic bags at two homes in Villers-au-Tertre, a sleepy village of about 650 people 125 miles north of Paris.
She initially confessed in custody to killing two children at birth about ten years ago, before admitting to the murder of the six others, prosecutors said.
Authorities have placed Cottrez, an auxiliary nurse, under formal investigation - a preliminary stage before criminal charges - for "voluntary murder of minors under the age of 15".
Her husband, a carpenter, was also put under investigation for hiding the bodies and not alerting police.
The prosecutor asked for the woman to be held in custody and the man to be freed under judicial supervision. There was no immediate comment from lawyers representing the couple.
