Police have confirmed finding the body of a baby buried in the back garden of a terraced home in the village of ‘s-Heerenberg in Gelderland.

The tip-off came from ‘reliable sources’ who said that a baby may have been buried behind the  house, police said. An undertaker collected the remains shortly before 5pm on Monday, the AD reported.

Police told the paper that the investigation will take some time, and the first thing to do is to establish the cause of death. ‘It is a sad situation and we can’t say any more,’ police spokesman Ruud Visser told the paper.

The house was lived in by a man and a woman and the man’s father told the AD that the couple had decided to separate. He said he had no idea if the baby belonged to the couple.