An unemployed Belgian woman whose husband had just lost his job drowned her two sons, aged two and six, in the bathtub due to distress over their future, the prosecutor's office said.
"She was upset by the dire financial situation and said it was the only solution she could find to avoid her children being unhappy when they grew up," Philippe Dulieu, public prosecutor in the city of Namur, told Belga news agency.
The woman, who was born in 1987, gave the two boys sleeping pills once her husband had left the house Saturday before drowning them and putting them to bed, the prosecutor's office said.
When he returned "she told him the children were already in bed. They spent the evening together, watching TV." Her husband discoverd they were dead on Sunday.
She was charged today and placed in custody.
