French police arrest man suspected of killing wife, four children in Paris

French police on Tuesday arrested a man suspected of killing his wife and four children in a scene of “very great violence” on Christmas Day in Paris, according to authorities.

Police forced their way into an apartment on Christmas Day and found the bodies of a woman, a baby and three other children aged up to 10, the public prosecutor Jean-Baptiste Bladier said at a press conference on Tuesday.

The younger children, both boys, had no knife wounds but looked as though they had been suffocated or drowned. The mother and her two older children, both girls, had been stabbed multiple times, The Guardian reported.

The arrested man, who is reported by local media to be the woman’s husband and father of the children, was seen on a security camera footage leaving the apartment at Meaux in the Île-de-France region east of Paris.

Meanwhile, a formal investigation has been launched into the incident on two charges, each carrying a life sentence if proven: the "deliberate killing" of youngsters under the age of 15 and the "deliberate killing" of a partner.

Bladier said police found a scene with blood everywhere when they broke into the flat on Monday evening after being alerted by a neighbour who was a close friend of the mother, aged 35.

None of the victims have been named and Bladier said it would be illegal to publish anything that could identify the children, who were aged 10, seven, four and nine months.

According to medical documents found at the apartment, the suspect, aged 33, a qualified plumber of French nationality, suffered from depression and psychological problems.

In November 2019, the man was arrested for allegedly stabbing the woman six weeks before their third child's birth.

The woman declined pressing charges and help from victim support organisations, leading to the case being dropped due to his frail mental state.

Bladier said the woman told police in 2019 that she and her partner had met in school as teenagers and had been together for 14 years, before getting married in October this year.

The incident follows the release of French Interior Ministry figures showing that on average one woman in France is murdered by her partner or former partner every three days.