DOUAI, France - French police detained a couple after the bodies of eight new-born babies were found in a house and in the garden of another home in a northern village, officials said Wednesday.

Police with sniffer dogs were continuing their search in Villers-au-Tertre after arresting the pair, both in their 40s, on Tuesday.

Neighbours said the new owners of a house in the village had called the police after they found the bones of infants in the garden of their new home.

Police inquiries led to another house in the village around a kilometre (two thirds of a miles) away where more babies' bodies were found, neighbours said.

The prosecutors' office in the nearby city of Douai was to open a judicial inquiry on Thursday which was expected to lead in turn to the couple being charged, a judicial source said.

Prosecutors were to give a news conference about the macabre discovery on Thursday.