Baby found dead in Berlin

Between parked cars, hidden under piles of leaves in a busy section of Berlin, street cleaning crews discovered the body of a baby on Friday.

The largely decomposed body was found near the Oberbaum Bridge in Berlin's bustling Friedrichshain neighborhood.

"The forensic examination showed that it was the body of a human infant," the Berlin police said on Friday evening, local time. Detectives have now taken up the case on suspicion of homicide.

Police cordoned off the crime scene from the public in the afternoon so that the forensics team could work. Due to the severe degree of decomposition, authorities were not sure at first whether the infant was human.

Child deaths

Last week, police discovered the bodies of eight babies in a house in Bavaria. The autopsy report revealed that six of the babies had a chance of survival after birth. A 45-year-old woman confessed to giving birth to the babies and admitted to killing some of them after birth.

The woman is currently awaiting trial.

In a separate incident, a 32-year old German confessed to killing two young boys. One of the victims was Mohamed, a 4 year-old Bosnian refugee whom the suspect had kidnapped from a Berlin registration center in October.

The man also admitted to killing Elias, a 6 year-old German boy, after he went missing from his parents' home outside of Berlin in July.

rs/jm (AFP, dpa)