Greek police have charged a British woman with murdering her newborn baby while on holiday.

The 20-year-old is accused of strangling the child after giving birth in a hotel room in Malia on the Mediterranean tourist island of Crete.

The woman is under police guard in a hospital in the Cretan capital Heraklion, where she is being treated for blood loss.

A Foreign Office spokesman said: "We can confirm a British national was charged with the murder of her baby in Malia, Crete, today. We are providing consular assistance."

The woman had travelled to the popular package-tourist destination of Malia on Crete's north coast with her sister and a female friend from Britain. The three women were sharing a hotel room.

Police were notified after the woman's two companions rushed her to hospital in Heraklion, 19 miles west of Malia, to receive treatment after she gave birth to the baby at the hotel.

Police found the dead child in the hotel room with sheets around its neck and covering its face - a coroner's report concluded the child had died of asphyxiation.

"When the baby was born it was alive and breathing, after that someone killed it violently," the coroner Manolis Mihalodimitrakis told reporters.

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