VILLERS-AU-TERTRE: French police detained a couple after the bodies of eight new-born babies were found in a house and in the garden of another home in a northern village, officials said Wednesday.

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

Neighbours said the new owners of a house in the village had called the police after they found the bones of infants in the garden of their new home as they were digging a pool there.

Police inquiries led to another house in the village around a kilometre (two thirds of a miles) away, where more babies` bodies were found, neighbours said. This was where the couple now lived, they said.

The prosecutors` office in the nearby city of Douai was to open a judicial inquiry on Thursday which was expected to lead to the couple being charged, a judicial source said.

Paramilitary gendarmes were deployed outside the house in Villers au Tertre were the babies` bodies were found.

"I`m still in shock," the former mayor of the village, Daniel Collignon, told AFP.

The village was a very calm, very rural place, he said, adding that he had only heard about the investigation on television.

Neighbours also reacted with astonishment to the news.

"They are normal people, who even have a role in the community," said one neighbour. "It`s incredible."

Another neighbour, a man in his 50s, added: "These are attractive, helpful, polite and courteous people...."

They had done nothing to suggest that they might be capable of abnormal behaviour, he added.

As teams of journalists arrived at the scene, he, like several other neighbours who preferred not to be identified, insisted that the couple should be not be judged in advance by the media.

The couple had two grown-up daughters and were grandparents, said another neighbour. One resident said they had been in the village of 700 people since at least 1997.

Prosecutors were to give a news conference about the macabre discovery on Thursday.

This is just the latest in a string of similar cases in France.

The most notorious recent case was that of 41-year-old Veronique Courjault, who in June 2009 was jailed for eight years by a court in Tours, central France.

She admitted to having smothered two baby boys born in secret at her expat home in South Korea in 2002 and 2003, and a third child born in France in 1999.

She was freed in May 2010, having served a total of four years in jail after the time she spent in remand since her arrest.

BDST: 0930 HRS, July 29, 2010