Dominique Cottrez, a nursing assistant in her forties, was charged with the murder of the babies, while her husband Pierre-Marie Cottrez was freed without charge.

Earlier, prosecution sources said the supposed father of the babies had been charged with failing to report the killings and hiding the bodies, but the prosecutor said the investigating magistrate had ruled against this.

Cottrez admitted suffocating the infants and insisted her husband knew nothing about the pregnancies or the killings, according to an official close to the investigations.

She faces life imprisonment.

Her husband denied any knowledge of the deaths, the official said.

Stunned residents of the couple's quiet village of Villers-au-Tertre in northern France put flowers and candles outside the two houses where police had found the skeletal remains over the previous few days.

Prosecutors described it as the worst case of infanticide in recent French history, following a string of similar cases in which isolated and troubled mothers disposed of their newborns.

Pierre-Marie Cottrez worked as a carpenter and was a respected member of the council in Villers- au-Tertre, a 620-strong community.

"He's on his third term in office. He used to volunteer in the community. He's a respectable man," local mayor Patrick Mercier said.

Mercier said the councillor's wife was a more withdrawn person who rarely took part in village life. She had a weight problem which might be the reason why any pregnancies had passed unnoticed.

The couple were arrested while police used sniffer dogs to search two addresses after the new owners of a home found the bones of two infants while digging in their garden. The house previously belonged to the parents of the arrested woman.

Search teams then headed on to the couple's current home in another part of the village, where six more sets of remains were found, a local councillor told reporters.

"I'm thinking of all the children who didn't ask to be born and were thrown out a few hours later," said local priest Father Robert Meignotte.

"I'm very upset. I baptize five children every Sunday in the 17 villages of the parish. You don't just throw children out like that in a big bag. It's incomprehensible."

A neighbor, a man in his 50s, said: "These are attractive, helpful, polite and courteous people, who did nothing to make you think them capable of anything abnormal."

The couple had lived in the village for 15 years and have two grown-up daughters who have children themselves, local residents said.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE