French police on Friday arrested a woman on suspicion of stabbing her three children to death at their home near Paris.
The children's bodies were found by their father on his return from work Friday morning after a night shift.
RTL radio and other media cited police sources as saying the children's throats had been slit.
The mother was missing from the house in Dampmart, about 30 kilometres east of Paris, when the father, a doctor, arrived.
On finding his children lying in a pool of blood. He ran out of the house screaming, witnesses told AFP agency.
Emergency services found the bodies of the two youngest children - a boy aged nine and a girl aged 11 - when they arrived at the scene. An older boy was still alive but died shortly after of his injuries.
The mother, who was reported to be in her forties, was found at an apartment in Paris on Friday afternoon.