German woman convicted for killing her 5 newborns

BERLIN (AP) - A German court has convicted a woman of manslaughter and sentenced her to nine years in prison for killing five of her newborn babies.

The 29-year-old woman, whose name hasn't been released in keeping with German privacy rules, turned herself in to authorities last September. Prosecutors said then that she killed the infants shortly after giving birth in secret at home or in the woods because she worried her husband would leave her if she had any more children.

The state court in Flensburg, on Germany's border with Denmark, convicted her Thursday of five counts of manslaughter, the dpa news agency reported. Prosecutors had sought a 10-year sentence and the defence a seven-year term.

The babies were born between 2006 and 2012. The woman has two living children.