BELGIUM: A Belgian mother stabbed her five children to death yesterday before trying to commit suicide in what authorities described as an "act of desperation".
Police said the emergency services had found the bodies of the children aged between three and 14 years of age at their home in the town of Nivelles, which is about 30 kilometres (19 miles) south of Brussels.
The four girls and one boy had all been stabbed with a knife on Wednesday afternoon sometime between two and three o'clock.
The woman had called the emergency services after her failed suicide attempt.
Local media said she was taken to a local hospital, where her condition was described as critical.
Police could not say what had made her kill her children.
A note reading "Call the police, urgent" was taped to the front door of the house on the outskirts of Nivelles. Belgium's Belga news agency said the woman had left a note to a friend the day before saying what she intended to do.
The public prosecutor's office officials spoke of "an act of desperation".
"She left a letter that lets it appear that she committed the facts," Bernard Goethals of the prosecutor's office told RTL network. "We don't know whether the woman used other means than a knife and we don't know whether the children defended themselves," said Mr Goethals.
Belgian media said the woman was receiving treatment for depression and had written a letter intended for a friend outlining her plans.
They said she was a 51-year-old woman, married to a man eight years her junior. He was not at home when the killings took place.
Children do not have to attend school on Wednesday afternoon and the killings took place two hours after their return home.