Five children were found dead at an apartment in a western German city on Thursday, and their mother is suspected of killing them, authorities said.
The bodies were found in Solingen, near Cologne and Duesseldorf.
The 27-year-old mother of the three girls and two boys later jumped in front of a train in Duesseldorf and was taken to a hospital with injuries, police spokesman Stefan Weiand told reporters.
The dead girls were ages 1, 2 and 3, and the boys were 6 and 8, German news agency dpa reported.
The mother’s sixth child, an 11-year-old boy, survived and was with relatives.
There was no immediate information on the causes of death or possible motive.
The bodies were found after the children’s grandmother, who lives 60 kilometers (37 miles) away, notified police on Thursday afternoon, said the region’s top security official, Herbert Reul.
Officials told German news agency DPA that the children’s grandmother contacted police just before 2 p.m. local time (1200 GMT) to report the deaths. The authorities have since managed to contact the children’s father.
“The cause of death is to be determined through investigations and autopsy,” said police spokesman Stefan Weiand.
There were early reports that medication was used in the children’s deaths. “We are investigating in that direction,” said Weiand.
North Rhine-Westphalia Interior Minister Herbert Reul told DPA that the children’s 27-year-old mother jumped in front of a train in Düsseldorf, which is just northwest of Solingen, in the early afternoon. According to a spokesperson with the fire department, the woman was found between two-track beds and taken to a hospital.
“A mother is suspected of killing 5 of her children in this apartment block in Solingen, western Germany, before heading to Düsseldorf, where police say she tried to end her life,” DW’s Jessie Wingard tweeted from the scene.
A neighbor told DW that the community was in “shock.”
“We never thought this could happen, not here,” she said.
