French police launched a murder investigation Sunday after after a 12-year-old boy was found dead near a city centre with a towel tied around his neck, prosecutors said.
The child was found on the banks of the Vilaine river in the northwestern city of Rennes, the local prosecutors’ office said in a statement.
“The circumstances that led to the death have yet to be established,” but “the involvement of a third party is among the hypotheses”, it added.
“A wet bath towel was tied very tightly around his neck.”
Police were at the scene on Sunday evening, carrying out examinations near a residential complex close to the river, an AFP journalist saw.
“It’s a real shock. It’s a quiet neighbourhood, not far from the centre. I’ve never been bothered,” a local resident in her thirties, who declined to give her name, told AFP.
