BORDEAUX, France (AFP) – French prosecutors began a murder probe Saturday into one of country's worst cases of infanticide after five dead babies were discovered in a home near Bordeaux.

The babies' 35-year-old mother was hospitalised in a psychiatric ward after police found the corpses on Thursday – four of them in the freezer.

Her 40-year-old husband was charged Saturday with failing to report a crime and possession of the body of a homicide or involuntary manslaughter victim.

It was the father who found a thermal bag containing the first corpse of a newborn baby early on Thursday at the family home, a source close to the investigation told AFP.

Investigators subsequently found the bodies of four other babies in a freezer at the home in the southwest of the country.

The mother apparently "gave birth at home alone", the source said.

The worst case of infanticide in recent French history dates back to 2010, when a mother admitted to killing eight of her babies, smothering them immediately after they were born.

Another French mother was jailed in 2009 for smothering two boys born in secret when she was living in South Korea, and a third child born in France. The bodies were also stored in a freezer.