Police Find Bodies of Missing Belgian Girls

Belgian police searching for two schoolgirls who went missing earlier this month have found their bodies, it was confirmed today.

Cedric Visart de Bocarme, the Liège prosecutor, said seven-year-old Stacy Lemmens and Nathalie Mahy, 10, had been murdered.

Stacy's body, the first to be discovered, was found around 200 metres from the cafe from which she and Nathalie, her step-sister, disappeared on the evening of June 9.

The girls were last seen playing on a bouncy castle outside Les Armuriers café, in the rundown Saint Leonard area of Liège, during a summer festival.

The Belga news agency reported that Stacy's body had been found in a systematic search rather than as a result of questioning.

Belgian authorities have charged 38-year-old Abdallah Ait Oud with the girls' abduction. Oud, the boyfriend of a waitress at the café, handed himself in to police after they announced they were searching for him.

He denies any involvement in the disappearance of Stacy and Nathalie.

Polioce have been holding Oud, who was convicted of raping a 14-year-old girl in 1994, in custody for more than a week.

The girls' disappearance has revived painful memories in Belgium of the murders committed by the child rapist Marc Dutroux in Belgium 10 years ago.

Dutroux kidnapped and raped six girls, one aged eight, and murdered two of them. Two others starved to death in a makeshift dungeon during his imprisonment for a minor offence.