French police detained a couple after the bodies of eight new-born babies were found in a house and a garden in a northern ­village, officials said yesterday.

Police with sniffer dogs were continuing their search in Villers-au-Tertre after arresting the pair, both in their 40s, on Tuesday.

The prosecutors’s office in the nearby city of Douai was due to begin a legal inquiry today which was expected to lead to the couple being charged, a judicial source said.

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