France Outraged By Newborn Killings

Faced with growing public revulsion, the French authorities yesterday appointed a special team of 11 gendarmes to investigate the deaths of four newborn babies whose bodies were found in plastic binliners partially buried in a forest in eastern France.

A farmer discovered the badly decomposed bodies last Tuesday near a path running along the edge of the Galfingue forest near Mulhouse, not far from the German border. The bags also contained bloodstained towels, clothing and part of a placenta.

Mulhouse's public prosecutor said an autopsy on the four bodies showed that all the babies had been born alive and had died from suffocation, probably by strangulation.

"The autopsy could not provide us with the exact date of their deaths," he said. "It could have been several weeks ago, maybe even months. We are appealing to any witnesses who may have seen anything suspicious."

Sources close to the investigation said last night that the grisly crime could prove difficult to solve. The farmer who discovered the bodies had not walked along the path where they were found since May.

"At the moment every possibility is open," said one officer. "It's possible, but unlikely, that the children were quadruplets. If they were, there surely have to be medical records somewhere. No mother gives birth to four babies in France without consulting a doctor at some stage."

DNA tests should at least reveal whether the newborns belonged to the same family, the officer said. But he added that police were also looking into the possibility that the children were unrelated, and even that they were born at different times.

"The bodies were so badly decomposed that the police doctor who first examined them thought there was only one," the investigator said. "It's possible that some were killed earlier than others and stored."

Philippe Schittly, the mayor of Bernwiller, a nearby village, said his community was "devastated" by the crime. "It's just unimaginable, a horror," he said."No one here can understand it."