The bodies of three babies have been discovered inside a deepfreeze in the cellar of a house in Germany.

The mother of the infants has been arrested and is currently being questioned by the police.

The 44-year-old woman had been living in the house in the village of Wenden-Moellmicke, in North Rhine-Westphalia, with her 49-year-old husband and three children, aged between 18 and 24.

Police have revealed little information at this stage, but have confirmed that it was a family member who alerted them on Sunday.

The babies are understood to have been born in the late 1980s and died shortly after birth.

Post mortems will be performed to establish the causes of death.

The Wenden case is the latest in a string of gruesome discoveries in Germany in recent years.

Last December three dead babies in Plauen, in Saxony, were found, and their 28-year-old mother is strongly suspected of killing them.

And last month a mother from Brieskow-Finkenherd, in Brandenburg, was sentenced to 15 years behind bars for killing nine of her ten children shortly after birth.

The dead babies had been hidden for years in flower pots and buckets before they were discovered in July 2005.

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