FRENCH police have arrested a 33-year-old man suspected of murdering his wife and four children.
An investigation began after their five bodies were found in a flat in Meaux, 40km (25 miles) north-east of Paris.
The victims are a woman and her four children aged between nine months and 10 years old.
Prosecutor Jean-Baptiste Bladier described a scene of “extreme violence” when police reached the flat, with pools of blood at the scene.
The flat showed no sign of break-in and the children’s father was not present, he told a press conference on Tuesday.
The alarm was raised after a neighbour had tried to reach the family several times and, when she saw the shutters were down, she had decided something was wrong.
She told French media she had found blood on the door handle and in front of the door, and then called the police.
The police traced the suspect by following CCTV footage, eventually arresting him at his father’s home in nearby Sevran.
Mr Bladier said the suspect was known to the police due to a previous case of domestic violence, although he had no criminal record.
In 2019, a month before the birth of the couple’s third child, the suspect attacked his partner with a knife, according to the prosecutor.
The Versailles judicial police service is investigating the murders. Mr Bladier said that the mother and her two eldest daughters aged 10 and seven had suffered “a large number of stab wounds”.
