German police said the children were aged nine and seven, and a relative present at the scene of the crime had been arrested.
Two children were found dead in an apartment in Hockenheim, a town in southwestern Germany, police said in a press statement on Sunday.
Much about the case remains unclear, although authorities said an adult woman has been taken into custody.
What we know so far
The victims were seven-year-old and nine-year-old, authorities said.
The two children were siblings, a police spokesperson confirmed to local public broadcaster SWR.
A 43-year-old woman was arrested at the scene of the crime and is being questioned on suspicion of homicide.
In a statement, police said the woman arrested was « a relative. » Authorities declined to say whether the suspect was the mother of the victims.
No other details have been revealed in the case.
The public prosecutor’s office and the criminal police office in the nearby city of Mannheim have launched an investigation into the deaths and ordered an autopsy.
A police spokesperson told news agency dpa that the autopsy is expected to be carried out on Tuesday.
Have there been similar cases?
While the exact relation between the arrested suspect and the children is not yet known, Germany has seen recent cases where adults were accused of murdering children in their family.
One case in particular sent shockwaves across the nation. In September 2020, a woman was accused of murdering five of her children in an apartment in the western German city of Solingen.
An autopsy revealed that they had been sedated before being suffocated in the bathtub. The victims ranged in age from 18 months to 8-years-old. The eldest child, who was 11 at the time, survived because he was not home at the time of the murders.
The 28-year-old mother of the children was found guilty and handed a life sentence in November 2021.
Source : DW
