French police have found the bones of five deceased infants in cardboard boxes at the home of a couple in southeastern France, prosecutors said on Tuesday.

Police opened a murder inquiry after they made the discovery in a flat in the town of Orange late Monday, the local prosecutor’s office said.

The 32-year-old woman had given birth to a healthy baby at home on Sunday before being taken to hospital, it said.

The 32-year-old man she lived with had been “troubled after discovering once again very late that his partner was pregnant” and had conducted a search of their home in the historic city centre, finding “what looked like human remains”.

He told the hospital, which informed the prosecutor’s office.

A forensic doctor said the remains likely belonged to five newborns, with further autopsies to be carried out.

Investigators have not yet spoken to the mother.

The couple also had two children aged eight and nine, the prosecutor’s office said.

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Neighbour Florent Jean told AFP they went to the local primary school.

The mother “would go and pick them up from school at lunchtime to eat”, and her partner appeared to be away at work all day, he said.

Bicycles lay propped against stair railings outside their second-floor flat on Tuesday, while the door was sealed off with red tape.

In March, a French court jailed a 44-year-old woman for 25 years over the deaths of two of her newborn babies, who police found in the family freezer.

In 2018, a court sentenced a woman with a depressive and sometimes violent husband to eight years in prison for drowning five of her newborn babies and freezing their bodies.

In 2015, another court jailed a mother for nine years for killing eight of her newborns, with the jury finding she had impaired judgement.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)