A French forest warden and convicted rapist has confessed to killing six girls, Belgian public prosecutors say, raising the spectre of another child sex scandal as big as that of Marc Dutroux.
Prosecutors said that Michel Fourniret, 62, was also being investigated for the deaths of three other girls.
"He has admitted to six counts of murder," public prosecutor Mr Arnoud d'Aspremont-Lynden said.
On June 22nd, a court sent Dutroux, the country's most hated criminal, to life in prison after a three-month trial for kidnapping and raping six girls and killing four of them.
The crimes, committed more than seven years ago, shocked and angered Belgians, many of whom came to suspect complicity on the part of police and politicians.
Fourniret has been under arrest in Belgium for a year for trying to kidnap a girl in the southern town of Ciney.
He confessed after his wife told investigators that he had kidnapped, raped and killed 12-year-old Elisabeth Brichet in 1989, the prosecutors said.