Children's slaughter shocks US

Veteran police officers are said to have been shocked by the crime

Police in the US city of Baltimore are investigating the gruesome killing of three children in an apartment.

A woman raised the alarm when she came home to find a 10-year-old boy decapitated and two 9-year-old girls partially beheaded.

The first officer at the scene could not "handle it" and had to pass the case on, a police spokesman said.

A man is being questioned in connection with the crime, described by the city's mayor as "tragic and unfathomably sad".

Weapon found

A police despatch, quoted by the Baltimore Sun newspaper, reports a woman making an emergency call on Thursday evening saying, "There's blood all over my apartment... They've killed my family."

Reports say a Spanish-speaking woman raised the alarm after coming home to find the bodies and notifying her neighbour.

Her neighbour, who spoke better English, contacted the police.

Baltimore's Deputy Police Commissioner Kenneth Blackwell said the crime was the most gruesome he had seen in 35 years of service.

Mr Blackwell said a "person of interest" had been arrested near the scene of the crime and was being questioned.

No charges had been filed.

A weapon had also been recovered near the apartment but police would not say what it was.

The crime is said to have shocked the largely peaceful neighbourhood.

"They were very nice, cordial kids," Al Johnson, who lives nearby, told the Associated Press news agency.

The neighbourhood, mostly inhabited by an Orthodox Jewish community, is also said to host a few closely-knit Hispanic families.