Abandoned children taken into care

Fifteen children found abandoned by their parents in a house in Anderlecht have been placed in childcare centres as police look for their parents. The children, from three Bosnian families living in Brussels illegally, were being looked after by a 19-year-old girl from one of the families. She was questioned by police and later released. The children included two babies aged eight and nine months, who were taken immediately to hospital where it was found they were infected with scabies, a contagious skin disease caused by a parasite. Although the other children appear not to be infected, the police station where the children were initially held had to be disinfected. Soon after the discovery, the mother of one of the two babies and four other children turned up at the hospital. The parents of the remaining children have still to be traced.