A British woman is being questioned by French police after her five-month old baby was found dead at their holiday home.
The child’s father discovered the body in a bed on Saturday morning and called the emergency services to the gîte at Saint-Pée-sur-Nivelle near Bayonne in the Basque region.
Paramedics were unable to revive the child. A doctor who was called to the scene declared it was not a “natural death”.
The woman, who has not been named, and her partner had spent a week at the gîte with their two children, the eldest aged three, and were due to leave on Saturday afternoon.
According to French reports, the father got up early on Saturday morning and left the bedroom where the family was sleeping together in the same bed. When the mother, who is in her 30s, rose at 9am, her partner discovered the baby was dead and called the police.
Marc Mariée, the deputy public prosecutor at Bayonne, told journalists: “The suspicious death of a baby was confirmed at the scene.” He added that the police inquiry “very quickly moved towards the mother, who was taken into police custody in the morning. This custody has been extended.”
A postmortem is to be carried out in the next few days.
