CAIRNS, Australia: The mother of seven of eight children killed in Australia was charged with their murder Sunday, police said, describing it as the most tragic episode in their career as a makeshift memorial saw an outpouring of grief.
The 37-year-old, named in local media as Mersane Warria, was charged with eight counts of murder after the bodies of the children — four girls and four boys aged between two to 14 — were found in the northern city of Cairns on Friday morning.
The murders have stunned Australia, still reeling from a dramatic siege in a central Sydney cafe this week, which left two hostages and a gunman dead, and prompted widespread shock and anger.
“I would suspect it might be the most tragic event we have had to deal with,” Cairns detective inspector Bruno Asnicar told reporters.
“All of the family has been advised (of the charges). This is very raw and it is a very emotive time for everybody. The family is deeply upset but the community is pulling together.”
The woman remained under guard in a Cairns hospital after being arrested on Saturday and appeared before a magistrate at a bedside hearing, Queensland police said in a statement.
Police said the woman, who is the mother of the seven younger children and the aunt of the 14-year-old girl, has sustained injuries that are not life-threatening.
There will be a formal hearing in a Cairns court on Monday, with police set to oppose bail.
Officers have not revealed the cause of death of the children but said they were looking into various scenarios, including suffocation.
“We are considering that (suffocation) and that’s why it’s taking a bit of time,” Asnicar said earlier Sunday.
Police previously said that knives were found at the house where the bodies were discovered.
Autopsies on the children were continuing and would be completed late Sunday at the earliest, police said.
In moving scenes at the makeshift memorial established in a park near the crime scene, a man believed to be the father of the three youngest children wailed “my babies, my babies,” Fairfax Media reported.
He was joined at the shrine of flowers and teddy bears by other mourning relatives from the victims’ Torres Strait Islander community.
“The last time I saw her she kissed me. She said she loved me and she asked for Aus$100 which I said I’d give to her on Saturday morning on her birthday,” the father of the oldest victim told Fairfax. “My daughter, she was beautiful.”
Queensland Police have not officially confirmed the identity of the mother or the family for cultural reasons. In some indigenous cultures it is considered disrespectful to say a deceased person’s name.
Mother charged with murder of eight children in Australia
Mother charged with murder of eight children in Australia
French publisher recalls dictionary over ‘Jewish settler’ reference
- The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks”
- The four books are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said
PARSI: French publisher Hachette on Friday said it had recalled a dictionary that described the Israeli victims of the October 7, 2023 attacks as “Jewish settlers” and promised to review all its textbooks and educational materials.
The Larousse dictionary for 11- to 15-year-old students contained the same phrase as that discovered by an anti-racism body in three revision books, the company told AFP.
The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks, Israel decided to tighten its economic blockade and invade a large part of the Gaza Strip, triggering a major humanitarian crisis in the region.”
The worst attack in Israeli history saw militants from the Palestinian Islamist group kill around 1,200 people in settlements close to the Gaza Strip and at a music festival.
“Jewish settlers” is a term used to describe Israelis living on illegally occupied Palestinian land.
The four books, which were immediately withdrawn from sale, are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said, promising a “thorough review of its textbooks, educational materials and dictionaries.”
France’s leading publishing group, which came under the control of the ultra-conservative Vincent Bollore at the end of 2023, has begun an internal inquiry “to determine how such an error was made.”
It promised to put in place “a new, strengthened verification process for all its future publications” in these series.
President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday said that it was “intolerable” that the revision books for the French school leavers’ exam, the baccalaureat, “falsify the facts” about the “terrorist and antisemitic attacks by Hamas.”
“Revisionism has no place in the Republic,” he wrote on X.
Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people, with 251 people taken hostage, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Authorities in Gaza estimate that more than 70,000 people have been killed by Israeli forces during their bombardment of the territory since, while nearly 80 percent of buildings have been destroyed or damaged, according to UN data.
Israeli forces have killed at least 447 Palestinians in Gaza since a ceasefire took effect in October, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
