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Mom confesses to sons' killing
26/12/2007 19:46 - (SA)
Regensburg - A mother has confessed to killing her infant sons over Christmas, police in southern Germany said on Wednesday, the latest in a series of such killings that had shocked the country.
Officers arrested the 37-year-old mother on Christmas Day in the town of Beratzhausen, near Regensburg, Bavaria, after the grandmother found the children dead in the bath, said a police spokesperson.
The children's faces and necks bore signs of violence. Their mother was sitting in another room.
The mother had already confessed to the killings, but had so far offered no explanation, said police. She was due to appear in court on Wednesday.
The father, 45, who was at work at the time the children were killed, had been ruled out as a suspect.
Regular checkups for babies, toddlers
The case was the latest in a series of recent infanticides that had shocked Germany and prompted a series of federal measures to improve social services and child welfare.
Last Wednesday, the Chancellor Angela Merkel approved a raft of measures to protect families, at a crisis meeting over a series of grisly child murders blamed on parents.
Merkel and the leaders of Germany's 16 states approved a plan of action allowing the authorities to take swifter action when child neglect or abuse are suspected. The new package also required regular checkups for babies and toddlers and obliges doctors to report suspicious cases.
A national database of authorities' records on child welfare was also planned, compiling information from health care providers, child protection services, social welfare offices, family courts and the police.
It was a string of horrific child killings in recent weeks that shook the country and prompted Merkel to take action. She said: "These incomprehensible cases leave us deeply shaken."
Earlier this month, police found the bodies of five brothers, aged three to nine, in a home in the northern village of Darry after their 31-year-old mother confessed to a psychiatrist that she had killed them.
That grim discovery came just a day after police arrested a woman in Plauen in eastern Germany on suspicion of killing three babies in recent years, in each case shortly after giving birth to the child.
The cases had prompted Germans to ask whether the state was failing to help overwhelmed parents.
- AFP
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