Israel was transfixed on Wednesday by the deaths of two children who police believe were drowned by their mothers, cases that stirred emotions already reeling from the suspected killing of a girl by her grandfather.

A court ordered the mother of a boy, aged four, held for nine days for police questioning on suspicion that she drowned him yesterday in a bathtub in their apartment in Tel Aviv.

The woman's lawyer said her client, who has not been charged, was suffering from mental health problems.

On Friday, police arrested the mother of another four-year-old boy and said she had drowned him at the beach and had described her son as a burden.

Police are still searching for the body of Rose Pizem, whose grandfather -- her mother's live-in lover -- is suspected of killing the four-year-old and throwing her corpse into a Tel Aviv river in a suitcase.

The girl's disappearance and the boys' deaths have been dominating media coverage in Israel and stirring a national debate about child abuse in a country where a quarter of the population is under the age of 15.

"The instinct that is embedded so deep in us, to protect our children, received a terrible shock over the past week," columnist Anat Medan wrote in Israel's biggest newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth. "Suddenly, it became clear that the child who yells 'mommy' doesn't always receive a hug and a kiss."