Mother arrested after three babies found in basement freezer

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The 44-year-old handed herself in to police in Germany on Sunday.

Her children found the bodies as they looked for a frozen pizza while their parents were away for the weekend.

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Discovered: The house in Wenden, Germany, where three baby corpses were found

The three infants are believed to have been born alive at some time in the 1980s but police do not yet know how they died.

The woman, her 47-year-old husband and three children - two sons aged 18 and 22, and a 24-year-old daughter - have lived in Wenden in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia since 1984.

Herbert Fingerhut, who is heading the police investigation, said: "It sounds unbelievable, but there are examples showing such things are possible."

Autopsies were expected to be carried out today to determine exactly how the children died. Police said it was believed they had been born alive, ruling out the possibility that they were still-births.

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A woman from Wenden is suspected to have killed and hidden the infants in a freezer in the basement

Neighbours were said to have been stunned by news of the find and the subsequent arrest.

Mayor of the town, Peter Brueser, said: "I've been mayor for 14 years, and this is definitely the worst day I've seen.

"We will need a long time here to work through this."

The grim discovery is the latest in a string of similar cases in Germany.

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Police officers search through garbage bins in front of the house

In the worst case, a woman was convicted of manslaughter in 2006 and sentenced to the maximum 15 years in prison for killing eight of her newborn babies and burying them in flower pots and a fish tank in the garden of her parents' home near the German-Polish border.

More recently, police in February were called to a home in northern Germany where a dead baby was discovered in the cellar.

In January, a 28-year-old German woman was charged with manslaughter after the remains of three babies were discovered in her house and the home of a relative. That woman has denied killing the three babies.

In January 2007, a 21-year-old admitted giving birth to three children and then hiding their bodies in her garage in the town of Thoerey in the eastern state of Thuringia.