“A man presented himself to the police in Dieppe (Seine-Maritime) to report that he had killed his three children,” the public prosecutor said, referring to the town in the northern French region of Normandy.

The bodies of two children were then found in the town of Alfortville, in the southeastern suburbs of Paris, where the father lives.

“Two deaths have been confirmed,” said the public prosecutor.

The children were stabbed to death, said a police source, without providing other details on the children or any information about the third child.

The father, who was born in 1982, had been convicted of domestic violence in 2021, said a source close to the case.

A restraining order against him was issued but subsequently lifted. The man was taken into police custody, the prosecutors said.